The Answer Is In The Beat

Kid Droid: Project Onyx (Droidsong, 2013)

January 16, 2014 at 9:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Unassuming little album of originals and remixes by a DJ/producer who is apparently the founder of the drum’n’bass scene in St. Louis. Not strictly a d’n’b release, and even the tracks that are d’n’b are more of the intelligent side of the genre. “Guns (Plexus Instruments’ Hypersleep LaPierre Remix)” could totally be on a Boards Of Canada or Plaid album in the late ’90s. 2 remixes by Monad are excursions into deep tech-house. Most of the original tracks are kind of downtempo and minimal, but “Onyx” is a nice quasi-industrial standout, maybe dark and dirty enough to appear on a release on Hymen, and “They’re Coming For You” is a nice breakbeat/acid-heavy 808 State-type jam. Nothing groundbreaking, but a little refreshing, definitely worth checking out.

Simon James Phillips: Chair (Room40, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 5:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Minimalist solo piano works. The pieces are extremely simple and repetitive, usually consisting of just a few notes, but the recording environment (a church in Berlin) and the sustain and delay transforms them into something that blurs time and space. “Set Ikon Set Remit” starts off with just 2 notes, and gradually clusters more, ending up as a thick wall of sustained piano that becomes too blurry to discern individual notes. “Ellipsis”, “The Voice Imitator” and “Poul” do similar tactics, fluttering and swelling and becoming thick audio fog, although “Ellipsis” and “The Voice Imitator” sound a bit less treated and more human. “Posture”, “9er On/Off Switch” and “Moth to Taper” are slower-moving, focusing on individual notes moving at a glacial pace. The more flurry-like pieces tend to work best to these ears, the slower ones can seem kind of awkward.

Rafael Anton Irisarri: The Unintentional Sea LP (Room40, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 3:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Irisarri is best known to these ears as The Sight Below, a project which has released two incredible albums on Ghostly International. His work under is own name steps away from beat-based ambient techno, and instead works with chilly textures which ebb and flow gracefully, awash in static and surface noise crackle. The overwhelmingly foggy cover art and oceanic title are perfect descriptors for this, as it’s just so vast, blurry, and enveloping. The tracks establish their atmosphere and loop endlessly, but usually for the last few minutes, they’ll add a distorted texture or some other element that takes it to a different location. “The Witness” has the most immediately striking melody, and it strikes you down. “Daybreak Comes Soon” plays with subtly reversing piano notes. “Lesser Than The Sum Of Its Parts” ends the album on a particularly beautiful/dreary note, with (what sounds like) lilting steel guitar and vocal textures, then in the last minute, swarms up and quickly cuts back to hushed vocals before fading away.

Interbellum: This was an important place in their lives (Flingco Sound System, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 2:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second album from Chicago artist Brendan Burke. Minimal, melancholy neo-classical, mainly utilizing piano and strings, but with plenty of field recordings and chatter. “Some Rather Poor Advice” has pulsating, jittering bass tones underneath the slowly paced piano melodies. “I Wish You Hadn’t Done That Richard” is a long, sad piano and string dirge with plenty of voices chattering underneath (and even some horses clopping by, it sounds like), which barely become audible enough to understand, but it doesn’t matter. You’re just too absorbed in the gloriously bummed out mood to care what anyone’s trying to talk about. “We Are All Micromentalists Now” obscures the music even more, with piano and synth softly playing underneath the loud whirr of cars passing by, and just general outside ambience. “He Looked Beyond My Faults (And Saw My Need)” is a return to the studio, with no more field recordings, just piano and crystalline synth tones. “Cayo Costa” is another long droney piece with spoken recordings and a constant machine hum, along with its melancholy piano and strings. Constant seems to be the operative word here; it just keeps going, occasionally focusing on a heart-tugging string part, but otherwise not really building to a climax. Is it hopeless? Is it depressing? Is there a reason to continue? Who knows. All that matters is that this exists, and that you’re in this moment, and that regardless of anything else in the world, right now, this feels right.

With Moths: For Silence tape (A Guide To Saints, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 1:39 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Gloomy darkwave drone from New Zealand. Blends a gloriously uneasy synth drone texture with ringing guitars reminiscent of the best vintage Factory and 4AD, and delayed shadowy vocals. Very lonely, sheltered, can’t-deal-with-the-world, which means (sadly) I can relate to this all too well and feel perfectly at home listening to it. The crows cawing throughout “Being In The World” feel like they’re circling overhead, giving it an extra grey, doomy feel, but not in a metal way. “To Deny The Inevitable” starts with a spoken sample saying that “this whole area used to be a sacred place”, and the music retains that feeling of something which used to be glorious and has now just faded into oblivion. “Into The Negative” is where things really plumb the depths, with a loop that sounds like wind blowing through a dungeon, mixed with completely grim synth lines. So full of despair, so hopeless, and it goes on for seven and a half minutes and you just feel like there’s no way out. The way I’m feeling right now, I don’t want to find a way out, I’m feeling totally comfortable listening to such grim, gloomy music like this.

Sleeper: From Beyond tape (A Guide To Saints, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 12:55 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Not to be confused with the ’90s Britpop band Sleeper (who I actually still quite like), or the experimental hip-hop musician, or dubstep producer, or emo band, or anyone else who’s ever used that name. This is a New Zealand musician doing drifty tape-drone stuff. Side A starts with some sort of medieval melody, which barely lasts a minute before it gets consumed by shrouded echo, and then turns into a long, slow distant drone, which sounds slightly faded and warped, and continues to sound even more so as it goes on. You’re wondering if the tape is just going to straight up break, but it keeps going and keeps returning like a slow dark decaying wave. Side B is another slowly repeating wave of darkness, but doesn’t sound as decayed, and instead of beginning with a different, more melodic part, this one ends with one, namely funeral march horns, which sound like they’re about to pick up right as the tape ends.

Rangefinder: Harmony State tape (A Guide To Saints, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 12:22 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Seriously gorgeous cassette of ambient synth jams from Will Long (Celer). A nice series of miniatures (4.5 minutes tops, mostly around 2 or 3 minutes), with all those lovely bubbling arpeggios and warm textures that are designed to be calm and inviting, and never stop being soothing, at least to these ears. There’s a few moments of slightly aggressive distortion (“Balance Drive”) and hints of industrial tension (“Rolling Planets”), but overall, it’s a smooth, sunny, sky-gazing ride. “Sunrise Aftertouch” has hard panned delay and a bright hopeful melody and it’s only 2 minutes and I can listen to it on loop forever. “Peaks And Downfalls” is only a minute long but manages to pack such an expressive punch and could easily go on for hours and I wouldn’t mind. “Theme For Kissy Suzuki” is appropriately themelike, seems like there’s a touch of some sort of introspectiveness, maybe some lost/sad feelings. “Carrier” is an appropriately bittersweet goodbye, but not in an overly dramatic way, just a sweet sendoff. Amazing tape, up there with Celer’s Menggayakan as the best work I’ve heard from Will Long.

Jeff Carey: [3:30] (Forwind, 2013)

January 11, 2014 at 1:51 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Harsh, clanging laptop noise from a Baltimore composer who previously went by the name 87 Central and released albums on Staalplaat, ERS and JDK Productions. Entirely laptop generated, no guitars or synths. “Ballast” is filled with metallic clanging and some shredding sounds. “Phosphor” is a bit more ponderous, covering low humming in a layer of static. “Node” is also kind of low and minimal, fluttering and crunching and morphing tones. “1001” is another harsh, clanging, shredding one, fantastically blown-out and headcrushing. This is the one to rock out to. “Sink” is the least noisy, most drifty track, with some sputtering, splintering tones spread out among lots of quietness. “Lock” is back to the harshness, with clattering blastbeats almost coming close to approximating breakcore, especially when the beats get shredded. OK, THIS is the one to rock out to.

Dhow: s/t CDr (Inam Records, 2013)

January 11, 2014 at 1:18 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Yet another ultra-limited Inam CDr, with Ryan Huber and Lid Emba reprising their 2008 collaboration under a new project name. Slow, trudgy doomgaze with drums, guitars and noise. “Brightwork” has a relaxed slow tempo, nice steady rhythm, heavenly layers of melodic guitar fuzz, and some buried voices, and the rhythm fades away in the last minute and a half. “Corinthian” is the most melodic and rhythm-driven, but breaks down 2/3 of the way through into scraping and static sounds, and sort of free-floats into fog for the remainder. “Act of Grace” is another gorgeous fuzz drone with crashing drumbeats, almost sounding like if Clams Casino went shoegaze/post-rock or something. “Genoa” steps away from rhythm, instead utilizing rustling and clanging noises over a tense synth-string drone. “Azimuth” is shorter and more relatively upbeat, with more distorted drumbeats and tape-manipulated vocals under a sunny noisy guitar rhythm. “Oakum” ends the album on a reflective note, sounding like the ending scene of a dramatic, bittersweet film or TV show.

Seven Lies About Girls/Hiss & Hum megapost

December 31, 2013 at 9:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Finally getting around to the package of tapes Hiss & Hum sent me way earlier in the year. First is a tape by Seven Lies About Girls called The Process Of Weeding Out (Teen Action Records, 2013) which is named after the Black Flag EP (and the track names on here are named after the tracks on that EP) but it doesn’t really resemble them musically, other than a rule-breaking, anti-authoritative mindset. It’s paranoid, dissonant, formless, and not an easy listen. The second side features harsh sawing sounds underneath amorphous bubbles, and ends with a splashy puddle of sound which dissipates into night air.

The Seven lies tape is alright, but I’m honestly way more into the two Hiss & Hum tapes. This is Seven Lies member Capt. Dave Destroyer’s solo project, and he has an extensive series of home-recorded tapes that he just gives away. The left-most tape pictured here has Shut-In Tape #35 scrawled on it, and it has a lot of humming and hissing that you might guess a shut-in would make, but the second side in particular is really pretty. Just a really good not-too-long dose of laser blasting mixed with sparkly atmospheric sounds, and eventually blasted beats. Then it all burns out to a fiery crisp. The tape on the right is Psychic Death, and that has more of a balance/contrast (it gets hard to tell sometimes) between pretty and harsh noise textures. Second has harsh noisy Japanese-psych-ish guitar soloing and some Dylan Ettinger-ish vocals, and then it just gets completely overdriven with spacey noise-droning. It goes on for a while and it’s pretty mindblowing.