December 15, 2013 at 8:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Qixoni: In Popuessing tape
New mixtape from Scolex Recordings founder Qixoni on Victor Vankmen’s My Shit Eats Tapes label. Continuous mix of various Qixoni tracks dating back to 2007, ranging from jungle to crushing breaks to industrial. Lots of lightspeed shredding breaks, dark (yet humorous) samples, and gabber kicks. In handy tape format for easy car blasting (if you’re like me and have an old car). Tape and digital can be obtained over at (where else)
Bandcamp.
December 15, 2013 at 8:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dilatedears: Dinner in the Cave of Veils
A pretty neat surprise I discovered late in the year. This guy is in Nerfbau who have released music on Placenta Recordings, and this is the Dilatedears project’s debut release for that label. Kind of slurpy, fuzzy IDM/micro-glitch-hop, maybe like Push Button Objects or other Chocolate Industries type artists from the early ’00s. Has a bit of a low-tech, homemade feel to it. It’s definitely basement/bedroom CDR-label IDM, not the type of more polished/mastered stuff a bigger electronic label would release, but really nice if you’re into this sort of thing. Miniaturized Drexciyan melodies and slivered beats, fuzzy synth-bass, and a few more glitched-out elements (the scrambled phone voice on “Voicemail_Measure”, the stuttering backwards waves of “ThrowingtheRobe”). Last few tracks get a bit more pretty/melodic/affecting. A nice stuck-at-home winter album. On
Bandcamp, you know what to do.
December 15, 2013 at 7:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Instagon: Thee Start Ov Thee End
Instagon is a long-running improv ensemble founded by members of Thee Temple of Psychick Youth North America. They’ve recorded over 600 sessions, none with the same lineup. LOB is the only constant member (he also records as Jolt Cola-themed noise act Jolthrower, and is in +DOG+). This is crudely recorded jammy improv, with plenty of sparse bass guitar lines, theremin and other whistling oscillations, and some freakout/free-jazz/free-rock elements. “Just A Trim” spirals around a mystical bassline and some background didgeridoo, and otherwise inhabits a very open (but dark) space. “Bearded Lady With Elongated Vocal Cords Telling Too Many Stories” is a 17 minute space-out, then “Disodence” is a short spazzy noise-rock burst. “Under the Stairs” is 2 minutes of meandering bass guitar and echoey theremin, with some guitar and drums in the backgrounds, and it fades out abruptly. “Below Zero” develops a thumping bassline (almost starts to sound like a cover of “Radar Love”) and has some drums and guitar backing it up, but otherwise seems to just be a showcase for that bassline. “Funeral For a Droid” is another long jam (9 minutes) which is less rhythmic, getting more noisy and blustery with sheets of feedback and distortion, and also some more theremin. “Lost In Outland” starts with guitar plucking and develops into a free jazz jam with drums and sax and bass guitar, and a thick cloud of rumbling fog, and more theremin. “Sonic Vacuum” (a good description of how this album sounds) is a slow pounding groove with horns, almost sort of like a free-jazz version of an early Swans song but not quite as tight or hard-hitting, there’s more space and it’s more unhinged. “Thee Start Ov Thee End” is a more uptempo, almost swinging groove, with plenty of fusion-y organ. The whole album definitely sounds like basement recording sessions recorded by a single distant microphone (that’s usually close to the bass guitar amp), so don’t expect balanced, proffesionally mixed-down sound quality.
December 15, 2013 at 3:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Night Shift: Trespassers Guide To Nowhere
Finally getting to the bottom of all the promo CDs that have been sitting around since Foxy Digitalis still existed. Most of these are bottom of the barrel and not worth talking about, but I’m pretty stunned that I’ve had this Night Shift CD sitting on my desk SEALED for an entire year, and not having any clue of how brilliant it is until just now. This is incredible enough to retroactively be one of my favorite albums of 2012. Very hard to describe dream-sequence collage, very thick distorted backwards loops, lots of spoken samples (some in other languages, and many from
freesound.org), acoustic guitars, glitch, drone, and just lots of unpredictability. And it’s 77 minutes long so it feels like it just never ends. Sort of reminds me of Paavorarju, but without actually lapsing into songs with hooks and melodies, instead it’s just more free-flowing and stream-of-consciousness. But it’s just seriously stunning and gorgeous and beautiful. I have the limited digipack version, but
Discogs says there’s an even more limited edition with an origami pop-up book inside a cotton sleeve, with inserts made from 100 year old ledger paper. Such a magnificently labored-over, beautiful album.
December 8, 2013 at 10:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Shapednoise: Until Human Voices Wake Us LP
I have to confess I haven’t been keeping up to date with Opal Tapes. I know all their releases are up on
Bandcamp, but who has time for that? So the only Opal Tapes release I’ve bought so far is this Shapednoise LP, and I don’t think I could’ve picked a better starting point. This record is just unbelievably massive. It just keeps grinding and crushing you. “Witness Of A Heart Attack Death” sounds less like dance music and more like an electronic rhythmic beating. Harsh and painful. “Between Hallucinations And High Poetry” dilates your pupils even further. The title track comes close to an industrial/EBM melody, but frays and circuit-bends it, until it’s completely splintered. “Information on the Individual Sensoriality” has an intense, bassy didgeridoo-like drone and ends in stuttering glitch and a fading sheet of static. “Survival Of The Dead” also has a didgeridoo-like drone, but more chopped noisy rhythm, which sounds more abstract at first but seems to straighten itself up a bit. Sort of. Vaguely. And it gets more intense and skipping at the end. “Black Cells” starts with a distorted drone loop which, again, also sounds vaguely like a didgeridoo, then gets another percussive loop added on top, and a layer of screeching noise piles on until it abruptly ends.
December 8, 2013 at 9:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Patrick Cowley: School Daze 2LP
I missed out on
Catholic, the 2009 CD release of a previously unissued Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras new wave album, but I kept reading about it and wanted to hear it. But that album’s release lead to this, a 2LP issue of some of Patrick Cowley’s soundtracks for gay porn films. The shrinkwrap of this record has a sticker warning of explicit material inside, and I can’t un-see what I can see, so I’m being careful not to open the gatefold. Regardless, all of the music here is truly brilliant. There’s some of the hi-NRG disco sound Cowley was known for, but there’s lots more ambient, Krautrock and kosmische synth stuff on here. And some exaggerated synth-funk, like the title track. And plenty of strange proto-techno. And the distorted tribal electronic beats of “Pagan Rhythms”. The second disc focuses on longer, more exploratory cuts, starting with the slow didgeridoo-trance of “Journey Home”. “Out Of Body” is exactly the type of spacey, beatless mood-piece you might expect from the title. “Primordial Landscape” is another astral projection which slowly shifts to a different vista. The deep bass arpeggiations of “Tides Of Man” end the album. The first disc of this album might appeal more to fans of obscure disco, but the second one would definitely be an eye-opener to any Berlin School enthusiasts who might not be as keen on proper dance music.
December 8, 2013 at 9:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Les Level: House Of Need 12″ EP
More self-consciously ’90s-jacking house from 100% Silk. The title track on here comes in two mixes bookending the record, the first being the “Cheese Mix”. Lots of “aw yeah!” samples, familiar deep house/garage organ sounds, and very synthetic string and horn pads. Doesn’t get quite as into Deee-Lite/C&C Music Factory territory as Sir Stephen, it’s truer to the oldschool Chicago house. The “Dirty Dub” of the song replaces the “aw yeah!” with a tiny bit of sinister/nervous laughter. Otherwise on the record, lots of pleasant night-drive smooth house.
December 8, 2013 at 8:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Bernard Parmegiani: De Natura Sonorum
Leave it to an artist’s death to get me to finally listen to his records, after having bought them months ago and never getting around to listening to them. And leave it to Discogs for reminding me that this 2LP pressing is supposed to be played at 45 RPM, after I think I already played it at 33 on my radio show. Playing it at 45 only makes it even more intense and mindblowing. Lots of split-second sounds whirring past you at any given moment, but there’s a strange stillness and ambience behind it all. And then there’s all these clattering drums and electric static on the second side. The second disc further twists electronic and natural sounds into confounding audio shapes. Stupendous sound quality, and it includes the 2 bonus movements that were included on the CD reissue that weren’t on the original vinyl.
Bernard Parmegiani: L’Œil Écoute / Dedans-Dehors
Also previously released on Recollection GRM was a disc featuring
L’Œil Écoute (1970) and
Dedans-Dehors (1977).
L’Œil Écoute translates to
The Eye Is Listening, and these pieces focus on visual sounds: trains, birds, water, forests, precipitation, crackling fire, etc. Some of them are simulated, and some are appropriated sounds. Actually, I think the labels on my copy of reversed, because it looks like
L’Œil Écoute starts with train sounds and then insects, and I’m hearing that on the other side of the record. But it’s confusing because the side that I thought was
L’Œil Écoute starts with mechanized train-like rhythms, and there’s plenty of other moments that seem to simulate nature sounds, so I can’t tell what’s being manipulated or synthesized and what isn’t. Regardless, more truly stunning, visionary audio work.
December 8, 2013 at 12:16 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Evil Robot Ted: Ejecta
came back to life this year after a lengthy hiatus, and now there’s a bunch of new tape, CDr and digital releases, and plenty of other releases on other labels by founder Evil Robot Ted.
Ejecta is a 2012
Bandcamp release available as a self-releases CDr and on cassette from
My Shit Eats Tapes. The tracks consist of splintered, fragmented breaks and noise, with scarred ambience shining through. The track “Suburban Black Metal” kind of sums it up for me, it has kind of a walking-around-the-mall-while-being-extremely-fucked-up feel to it. The 6-minute title track is more of a straightforward shredding-noise thing, without beats. The CDr version has live versions of some of the tracks, and the version of “Suburban Black Metal” actually sounds more cleaned up than the remixed version that appears earlier in the disc, while “Dreamt Waster” is a lot rawer and meaner.
Evil Robot Ted: Waster
is longer and less frenetic, it takes more time to build and there’s less breaks and noise. It’s more downtempo and dubbed out, less suburban mall and more rural dystopia. It’s almost like a chopped-n-screwed version of breakcore/noise. Feels like hanging around a junkyard in the dead of winter. The last track is blistering noise, though.
December 7, 2013 at 10:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Circuit Breaker: Cairn
Recorded in an abandoned warehouse, this is a self-released CDR from a South London-based duo who seem to have a freeform, post-industrial junk-art collage aesthetic. Musically, they remind me of a less harsh Wolf Eyes with Robert Smith singing (or maybe even Scott Walker at times, but that’s more of a stretch). Lo-fi synth feedback, droning rhythms, somewhat overstated vocals. The songs are very disjointed, never coming close to proper song structure, but retaining a lo-fi indie-punk edge, while droning out and using elements of industrial noise. Which is why it’s so disconcerting how the vocals are so grand and bellowing, you usually expect some sort of lifeless zombie snarl accompanying something like this. “Sleep (Version 2)” has the straightest rhythm and guitar chords, coming closest to a regular song. “Panopticon” strikes a similar balance of straightforward rhythm, guitar chords and feedback noise. Shorter tracks have more of a fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness feel, especially with the lyrics. Available at
Bandcamp.
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