The Answer Is In The Beat

Gezan: Katsute Uta Toiwaretasore (2010, reissued by Important Records, 2014)

March 30, 2014 at 4:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First album by a Japanese noise-rock band, now being released in America after Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple recommended the band to Important Records. Very dense, unpredictable, schizophrenic collage of fire-scorched guitar, clattering trash noises, and electronic detritus. “Mishima To Kuchibeni” features a few moments where it almost sounds like Gibby Haynes rapping in Japanese. “Getsumen No Tsume” is a much thrashier, riff-heavy track. “DODDODRIL BLUES” is a spiky industrial-punk track with a few rave synth blips. “Kouchuu No Wakai” isn’t a fast, noisy thrash track, it’s quieter and slower, but it still has a confusing mass of distorted, pitch-shifted voices and violent noises. Lots of evil whispering, laughing, and screaming. It isn’t until almost 5 minutes into the track that the guitars kick into distortion and a fast rock’n’roll rhythm, and then it all explodes and goes haywire… until it cuts to being quiet and randomly mysterious again. “Kocyuu, Shitatarazu” again starts slow, with a deceptively relaxed groove, but it keeps going off on tangents, with volatile drums trying to break into other rhythms, in some sort of bizarre dub-noise style, and sinister vocals sneaking through the whole song, and getting screamy for a bit towards the middle, and again towards the end. “MAN Machine” starts with a minute of collaged speech, but then turns into another noisy punk track with cut-n-paste vocals. “Kyoushin” is a long, slow, sludgy track with lots of pained screaming, and some random moments where the music mutes and there’s a guy saying something quietly in the corner. “Haru no Hiza” is the album’s uncharacteristically pretty track, and it’s probably my favorite. No brain-attacking noise, no random cut-ins or screaming, just quiet, drifty guitar and drums and soft vocals, with just a couple minutes of noisier psych guitar soloing at the end. A really lovely end to a supremely bizarre, exciting album.

Dhow: Amara CD-r (Inam Records, 2014)

March 30, 2014 at 3:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second CD-r from Dhow, one of Ryan Huber’s latest and greatest projects. The first 2 tracks on here were actually released in mono versions on a limited-to-23 lathe cut 7″, but are included here in stereo. “Galil” is overwhelming, distorted, and fuzzy, with a constant drum machine bashing away and uncountable layers of vibrating sounds. “Nhi” is a sad, blurring, drifty dronegaze track with abrasive yet floating textures. “Scultone” reminds me a lot of Alec Empire and Christoph De Babalon’s early ambient works, starting with clicking and popping sounds and quiet melodic ambience, but evolving into thick distorted noise. “Neophyte” is a much more melodic, guitar-centric anthemic post-rock song with plenty of cloudy distortion, and ending with disturbing crackling and gray drone for the last minute or so. “Magna Mater” is 2 minutes of guitar and drums that sound muted under a haze of smoke. “Amara” is full of meandering guitar loops, distant crashing factory-like sounds, and some hidden drum beats for a few brief periods. The last 2 minutes are much calmer. “Lindworm” is another melodic, anthemic guitar-driven track. “Captus” is slow, sludgy, and scorching, but only 2.5 minutes. “Archon” is a smokey, polluted cloud of drone, but with some thumping beats for the last minute. “Bells” has lots of scraping noises throughout, starts out slow and trudgy, but then halfway another muted beat pushes through, and it ends with layers of tremolo distortion and cathartic screaming.

Inutili: Music To Watch The Clouds On A Sunny Day (Aagoo, 2014)

March 30, 2014 at 12:41 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Two side-long improv psych tracks. Side 1 is called “Fry Your Brain”, and that says it all. Supremely distorted, swirly acid psych, with a loose meandering groove and lots of blown-out distortion. Side 2 (“Drunk of Colustro”) starts calmer and a bit more detached, but about a third of the way in, gets furious and noisy and just continues and gets more searing and caustic. Gets itself together for a pretty straightforward rhythm (but still wildly distorted) for the last couple minutes, before fading out to oblivion.

Deison & Mingle: Everything Collapse(d) (Aagoo Records/Rev. Lab., 2014)

March 29, 2014 at 7:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Newest album by noise/drone vet Deison, in collab with Andrea Gastaldello (Mingle). Definitely far more active and dynamic than the previous Deison release on Aagoo, which was very bleak and droney and generally just sounded like standing next to a giant reactor. This one has glitch beats, processing, and pianos, and even some singing. The last track (“Static Inertia”) ends with a short period of silence, followed by a cover of “Failure” by Swans, featuring a vocalist named Daniele Santagiuliana who makes a very convicing M. Gira impersonator. Other than that, lots of buzzing textures, clicks and cuts, and crunchy, sometimes erupting beats and bass. “Everything Collapses” has a horn-like drone texture with its blips and clicks. “Nessun Desiderio (Decimaction)” has rumbling static and crackly, ground-shaking downtempo beats that could rival your favorite Modern Love artist (Demdike Stare, Andy Stott et al). “Settled Apathy (Hospital)” has bass-growly IDM beats, then drifts off into a hospital deathbed scene. “One Million Parsec From Your Sun” is a “staring at a vast star field” moment. “An Estranged Perspective (Time Off)” is more piano ambience with subtle glitch rhythms.

HTRK: Psychic 9-5 Club (Ghostly International, 2014)

March 26, 2014 at 12:04 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Newest album from Australia-originated, London-based noisy-post-punk-turned-slow-creepy-electronic group HTRK (pronounced “Hate Rock”). As with their previous album, 2011’s Work (Work, Work), this is dark, chilling, a bit frightening, and absolutely beautiful. This album takes that album’s sound and makes it a bit more spacey and sensual; instead of dark, ticking drum machines and slowed post-punk basslines, this is more of a a pulsating, amorphous slither. It’s also a considerable bit brighter and more hopeful, even if the music is somehow a bit more minimal and airy. The lyrics speak of love, lust, sunshine and beauty, and the vocals on “Feels Like Love” just consist of laughter. “Chinatown Style” is easily my favorite, just a beautiful, heartbreaking vocal melody. Overall, not quite as devastating as their previous album, but this one turns the brightness and sexuality up a bit, and is well worth your time.

Fenster: The Pink Caves (Morr Music, 2014)

March 5, 2014 at 11:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second album from Morr Music dreampop group Fenster, and a vast improvement on their pretty-but-forgettable debut. Arrangements have minimal elements but (of course) big lush reverb, the songs are well written and pretty, the (slightly surfy) guitar hooks are light but tremolo-filled and catchy, there’s male and female vocal harmonies, and some of the lyrics are haunting, maybe even disturbing, but still gorgeous. “Better Days” starts with busy drum trills, then settles into sleek, slow-midtempo indie-pop. “Sunday Owls” adds a bit of a Lynchian dramatic, mysterious atmosphere, with traces of fuzzy, mutating guitar and/or synth effects. “In The Walls” is more sleek and smooth but somewhat dark and strange indie-pop with trippy effects on the vocals and instruments. “Cat Emperor” introduces the dual male/female vocal harmonies. “True Love” is a dark murder ballad where the singer plans to kill her true love, turning ’50s rock ballads on their twisted heads. “Mirrors” continues taking the album’s sound down a weird slow minimal exotica path, with layers of spooky vocal harmonies and echo-drenched chirping and scraping in the beginning. The rhythm picks up during the second half. “Fireflies” is a brief, quiet, whispery interlude. “On Repeat” is a bit more uptempo, with a more consistent tapping rhythm, and a bit more of a hook, and some nice vocal effects during the second half. “Hit & Run” is another uptempo catchy number, with male and female vocals, a good weepy guitar hook, and more strange vocal sounds in the background. “1982” has another small but sturdy rhythm, floating guitar effects, male vocals which slip into falsetto, and minimally but tastefully used analog synths. “Creatures” is a downbeat closer with a beatless guitar drift-out about a minute into the song before the second verse comes in, and another one to end the song. Really an unexpectedly solid album, I guess maybe for fans of Beach House or The xx, but subtly trippier, and I enjoy it way more than those bands.

Pairs: Your Feet Touch Ground, A Carousel tape (Metal Postcard, 2013)

March 5, 2014 at 12:03 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Surprise electronic/industrial album from Chinese noise-rock duo Pairs. Their usual work is harsh, blistering indie-punk, but this one strips the arrangements down to skeletal electronic pounding and tons of dark atmosphere. I guess it’s somewhat comparable to HTRK’s transformation from a guitar-driven post-punk band to dirgier, depressing (but utterly brilliant) electronic music. The 6 tracks on this tape (3 on each side) mostly run long, from 4:30 to almost 8 minutes, and take their time to explore their dark, sometimes terrifying, moods. The vocals here sort of remind me of B.R. Wallers of Country Teasers/The Rebel, just for how piercing and nasal they are. There’s also plenty of cursing, but it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s saying, with all the echo plus the accent. “Neighbours Trivia Night” and “Take Out This Celestial Body And Hang It Until It Is Dead” feature thumping 4/4 beats plus chilling atmosphere, and the last half of “Take Out…” is beatless, shifting drone. “Ballet Theme Downstream” is nothing more than a pounding thump and echo-drenched paranoid vocals. “Vatican Colours” is the most frightening of the bunch, 8 minutes of truly haunted ghost-like wailing, ticking drum machine, and shrieking vocals which eerily fade in and sound unnerving and possessed. It’s cathartic, but the way it’s mixed, how the elements slowly fade in and out, is almost smooth. “38,000 Feet In The Bathroom Line” is a diversion into confessional lo-fi acoustic folk, with pained vocals and frail strumming, and a few minutes of field recording from some sort of transit center at the end, and near silence for the last minute and a half. “Household Name” is another dirge set to a pounding drum machine, with plenty of layers of delay-enhanced vocals, and some fast-forwarding tape noise. The vocals on this one almost suggest a hollowed-out Skinny Puppy. Pretty surprising release, and it’s available as a free download on Bandcamp as well.

Pulse Emitter: Planetary Scale Synth Hypnosis 2CD (Metal Postcard, 2014) + Equinox tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2014)

March 1, 2014 at 10:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Pulse Emitter is the decade-plus running project of Portland synth artist/builder Daryl Groetsch, who started out releasing harsh noise, but gradually drifted towards more meditative, new age sounds. This 2CD anthology compiles pieces and excerpts from tapes, LPs, CDs and CD-rs dating back to 2007, originally released on labels such as NNA Tapes, Root Strata, Aguirre, Expansive, and Tranquility Tapes. Basically, this is Pulse Emitter’s equivalent of Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Rifts”, which means that it’s utterly essential and you should buy it without a second thought, especially since you probably won’t be able to track down all of the original releases if you don’t have them already. Some of the excerpted works fade out pretty suddenly, they make you want to track down the original tapes and hear them in their entirety. But at least a few 10 minute pieces like “Nebula” are included in their full glory. This is just simply seriously beautiful, emotive synthesizer music, spacey and cosmic but completely in touch with human emotions. Seems basic on some levels (some of it’s slow-moving, there’s no flashy arpeggios or flanger effects) but the pieces are all carefully composed and there’s more intricate elements here than it might seem on the surface. It gets kind of distant (as on pieces like “Spaceship”) but most of it is just really melodic and emotive and beautiful.

Also out this year is a Pulse Emitter tape on the always reliable Constellation Tatsu label. Obviously this tape doesn’t cut pieces down to fit more on a CD, so most of the tracks here extend past 10 minutes. It definitely feels like a singular work, rather than a compilation, so there’s more of a similar mood to these pieces. It seems a bit more wintry than the compilation, but that could just be reflected by the weather, and the feeling that this winter is never going to end. But there’s a constant twinkling throughout much of the music on this tape, giving a feeling of light snowfall on a dark winter night. Not a blizzard, just a pleasant dusting of snow, it helps if you’re in your warm house looking outside rather than freezing outside in the cold.

Cloud Becomes Your Hand: Rocks Or Cakes (Northern Spy, 2014)

March 1, 2014 at 8:18 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Fun indie-prog from a Brooklyn band who has played at Far House here in Ann Arbor a couple times. Can be compared to Sun City Girls, Zappa, Fred Frith, RIO, Canterbury, etc., but ultimately has its own sound. Playful and complex, with unpredictable changes, silly voices (but not too many, and not overused), violin, and synths. The vocals on “Sand Of Sea” suggest a straightforward midtempo psych-pop song, but then it goes off onto all sorts of weird tangents, with crunchy distorted drum effects and plenty of detours into backwards effects and flute-like synths. “Theme From Baby Age” starts with a perky violin rhythm, has some squawky chicken-like voices in the background, and ends with a voice stating that America is a flying clam, the cities are pearls, and the people are sand. “Waste Park” is a mellow, feedback-y, beatless instrumental. “Bay Shamps” is the longest cut, and has the most recognizable, stick-in-your-head melody, which takes almost a minute to build up to, but once it’s there, there’s no getting rid of it. “Nuclei Spinoffs” starts out calm enough, but the lyrics are wildly surrealist, and then the melodies get complex and convoluted and there’s all these scary sounds floating over everything. “Peanuts In A Celluloid Bag” ends the album with buzzing, dialtone-like synths and swooping, shrieking animal-like vocals.

Rich Sudney: Ionosonde (Ionosonde Recordings, 2014)

March 1, 2014 at 7:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dubby techno from a prolific Detroit netlabel artist who previously used the name Telegraphy. Clicky, crunchy beats and dubby echoing chords and bass, as well as watery, filtered vocals. The 3 “Phone Talk” interludes show a dark, biting sense of humor completely unique to certain corners of Detroit techno (think DBX, Dopplereffekt and friends), with the narrator calling up someone named Eggie Kishnoshky who tells him that the apocalypse is already here and that everything is a conspiracy and that you should start watching everything through your third eye. Also, the two continually refer to each other as “mon”. “An Enigma Inside A Riddle” begins with the repeating dial tones from the end of the first phone talk interlude, and by the end of the track, it’s morphed from ambient dub techno into a straightforward dub reggae riddim. “Everything Is Under Controlled” and “Dancing With Your Shadow” are entirely instrumental, with the former having some light guitar notes, and the latter having some more rapid, clicky, crunchy beats. “Phone Talk 3” ends grimly with explosions and the narrator being silenced while the operator asks if anyone’s there, and “Get A SSTV Decoder Dummy” is a creepy ambient collage using samples from the phone interludes. “Ocean (Telegraphy Reconstruct)” ends the album with an appropriately aquatic remix of “An Ocean Inside A Bottle”, bringing this oceanic-yet-fully-Detroit album to a close. Available on Bandcamp.