October 13, 2013 at 9:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Hobo Cubes/Jonathan James Carr: split tape
Not quite as blissy as some of the other CTatsu releases, this one’s a bit more unsettling and mysterious. The Hobo Cubes side has sporadic, delay-heavy beats, spectre-like synth flares, bubbling/swirling liquid-like vibrations, and halfway through, some chanting monk-like vocals. The last 4 minutes sound like a rhythmic, amplified electric fence frying in the rain, finally starting to singe and emit neon light, before getting abruptly cut off at the end of the side. Jonathan James Carr’s side is more swirling, unsettling laser-like sounds, flowing and crystallizing and mutating. There’s always a smooth electric organ-like drone underneath, which is pretty vibrant itself, but then there’s arpeggiating and blossoming tones on top of it. And sounds constantly warp and change and move through phases. It’s pretty neat.
October 13, 2013 at 8:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Body: Christs, Redeemers
Truly astounding doom metal, utilizing heavenly choirs, strings, synths, plenty of swirling production and noise, and shrieked vocals that sound like a rooster being electrocuted. The liner notes even credit a spiritual advisor! I always claim that I know nothing about metal and any time I end up liking something it ends up being Pitchfork-approved hipster metal, and given that Thrill Jockey is releasing this, this probably is no different, but fuck, just listen to this. The first track, “I, The Mourner Of Perished Days”, is just solemn female vocals and a slowly growing tornado of sounds and effects, then “To Attempt Openness” starts with the crushing riffs and howling vocals, with brilliant usage of feedback noise. “Melt Away” starts with dialog samples and choir vocals before the shrieking starts. “An Altar Or A Grave” features sorrowful strings in the beginning, as well as the crushing riffs and shrieking. “Failure To Desire To Communicate” is a little more upbeat, at least in the first minute, but it still bludgeons you with smashing cymbals and punishing, bloody guitar riffs. “Night Of Blood In A World Without End”, like the first track, features clear female vocals over a bed of strings, which slowly gets eaten by feedback distortion. “Prayers Unanswered” is slow and sludgy and has a breakdown with distorted spoken vocals. “Denial Of The Species” is a bit more electronic, with a slow, crunchy distorted beat and more synths, and the last minute has some discordant strings. “Shrouded” begins with a minute of hissing distortion noise, before the thundering drums, riffs and vocals take over. This track definitely has the most detailed drums/programming of the album. “Bearer Of Bad Things” is harsh, pummeling black metal, which gets interrupted by powerdrill noise, like Wolf Eyes crashing a Bathory show. Seriously an incredible album. The vocals might take some getting used to if this type of music isn’t your thing, but it’s harsh and weird and fucked up and awesome.
October 13, 2013 at 8:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
William Onyeabor: World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor?
Like Francis Bebey’s
African Electronic Music 1975-1982 collection from 2 years ago, this is a revelatory collection of funky, futuristic African music which was almost completely unheard until now (at least outside of Africa). The back cover lists a partial, theoretical backstory, so I’m not sure how David Byrne managed to license his music for a release on Luaka Bop, but we should all be so glad he did because this is INCREDIBLE. I’ve heard a few of these tracks on WFMU and have been fiending for more. The track that really piqued my interest was “Good Name”, a truly brilliant 10-minute space-disco track from 1983, which stands up to any of the best underground American and European disco of the era. “Good name is better than silver and gold and nobody can buy my good name”. Fuck yes. Otherwise, we have midtempo funk (“Body and Soul”), Afro-soul with strangely Yoko-ish background vocals (“Atomic Bomb”), uptempo echo-ey funky Afrobeat with horns and keyboards (“Something You Will Never Forget”, “Heaven and Hell”), heavy scratchy-guitar anti-war Afrobeat (“Why Go To War”), and lo-fi disco love songs (“Love Is Blind”, “Let’s Fall In Love”, “Fantastic Man”). Truly mind-warping synths and drum machines, great lyrics, understated vocals, and just seriously funky grooves. Easily one of the best reissues of the year!
October 13, 2013 at 8:41 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Vatican Shadow: Remember Your Black Day
After well over a dozen cassette, vinyl and digital releases, Dominick Fernow’s Muslimgauze-inspired project Vatican Shadow is now releasing its first “proper” album (what does that even mean these days? just because this is released on CD means it’s “proper”?). Compared to Prurient and most of his other projects, there’s very little noise here, just desolate electronic beats and synths. After a brief shadowy intro, “Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins” has downtempo beats and an almost darkwave feel to it. “Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliation” is sparse techno, but with the beats at half-mast and used sparingly, along with small ripples of synth. “Contractor Corpses Hung Over The Euphrates River” picks up the pace a bit, with a knocking, almost future-garage/post-dubstep beat, with a more thudding, clanging mid-90s Aphex-ian beat added, plus slightly acidic synths, again used sparingly. Really good track. “Enter Paradise” has a midtempo pounding beat and guitars, very Godflesh-y. “Remember Your Black Day” is more straightforward Richie Hawtin-esque minimal techno with a slowly building beat, but with faint organ in the background. “Not The Son Of Desert Storm, But The Child Of Chechnya” is crunchy industrial techno with some ghostly voice-like synths in the background. Banger! “Jet Fumes Above The Reflecting Pool” is another slow darkwave/industrial track with guitars and cold synths, but gets more detailed beat patterns. Definitely a far cry from Prurient albums like
Shipwrecker’s Diary, this is some haunting stuff for sure.
October 9, 2013 at 11:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
RH: New Bedford Squall
From the same label as Olekranon, Vopat and Sujo comes the newest project by presumably the same artist. RH (the mysterious man’s initials) focuses on dark ambient and drone, doing away with the heavy drum machine beats and doom-metal riffs, but still going with dread, darkness and despair. Guitar seems to be used here to create dark, churning drones, but there’s also some dour funeral horns (or synthetic approximations of such) on opener “Dharisee” and some rustling, crackling noise in the background. “Embayed” actually does use some drum machine (mostly cymbals and a low thump) but drowns everything in rhythmic distortion. “Timoneer” is like a soundtrack to a grainy, decaying film sequence about a ghost town. OK, “Lazaret” does also have some slowly thudding beats and droney metal guitars, but they’re way in the background. Everything about this song just sounds so distant and fading. “Receiver of Wrecks”, the final song, is another dour funeral drone (albeit a funeral that occurs in a cloud of fog too thick to see through). Free download on
Bandcamp.
October 9, 2013 at 10:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Lady Lazarus: All My Love In Half Light
Seriously stunning album by singer-songwriter Melissa Ann Sweat, who makes sparse, haunting songs usually just featuring her voice and piano, and a roomful of echo. Opener “Lapsarian” features accordion, which is always a good way to catch my attention. The dreamy echo brings to mind artists like Grouper, but more than anything else, the frailness and vulnerability of songs like “Wonder, Inc.” reminds me of Daniel Johnston, specifically songs like “Dream Scream”, which is also piano-based and one of my favorite songs of his. Probably not a coincidence, given that her
Bandcamp page features a cover of Johnston’s classic “Story Of An Artist”. “Constant Apples” adds some strings and a thicker layer of fog surrounding the piano. I guess the actual CD release features special artwork and a hand-stitched sleeve; the version we got at the radio station is just a promo with no artwork. But even without that, the music here speaks volumes.
October 6, 2013 at 5:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Fluorescent Heights: Tidal Motions tape
More CTatsu tapebliss. “Day” starts off with lots of dolphin sonar tones, rippling through a sea of tape-dulled frequencies. “Blue Island” has an almost Kraftwerkian melody, but without beats, instead just floating peacefully, and again caked in layers of tape hiss. Everything here has such an innocent lo-fi glow to it, it all feels like you’re peering into this wonderful world of bright yet dulled and simplified colors, and when the songs end, you feel like you’re physically being cut off and pulled away from it. Even though they’re not too different than the previous tracks, the last two tracks on here seem to get more expressive, with “Reaching The Open Ocean” stretching past 7 minutes and feeling way more adrift and free.
September 29, 2013 at 10:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Looks Realistic: Where Does It Come From? tape
I haven’t seen the whole
video, but this is the first
Constellation Tatsu title to be released in VHS form as well as cassette, and if any release on the label fits that aesthetic perfectly, it’s this one. Each side of the tape starts with an audio logo, and there’s such a wasted, weathered quality to it that it just feels like looking at pixel-damaged landscape imagery. “Dot Compost” manages to pull some Steve Reich phasing techniques out of severely mangled cassette tape manipulation. “Rainbow Reader” can’t help but bring to mind the theme song of a familiar PBS program about books that we all grew up watching, but then colorfully explodes with neon synth textures. “Pressed Rock Coating” buries some crushed voices under new age synths, and “Sleep Cadet” does even more so, with shimmering star-lit tones lulling you to sleep.
September 29, 2013 at 9:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Somatic Responses: Puny God
So glad Somatic Responses are still at it, releasing album after album of crushing rhythmic noise at an unrelenting pace as they’ve done since the mid-’90s. They still release physical CDs and vinyl, but they’ve been taking to
Bandcamp lately and unleashing a lot of material, including tons of free albums.
Puny God came out at the beginning of the year, and it’s as hard-hitting as anything they’ve ever done. “The Illusion Of Control” in particular is like a more blow-out, ballistic version of mid-’90s Aphex, and “Quartz Riot” shreds drum’n’bass breakbeats over sci-fi synths. “Hammer Drone” injects some acid into intelligent, choppy d’n’b, and “Sharpen The Sword” is obscenely hard, distorted techno (but not to the point of being gabber) with buzzsaw bass and a beatless mechanical drone section in the middle.
Somatic Responses: Sketches
Judging by the title,
Sketches is a 102-minute dump of unreleased, unfinished material and odds-and-ends. It definitely has a more cast-off, playful feel, focusing less on their hardcore side and more on melodic, less intense IDM. Some of their material feels like dense, mammoth constructions utilizing dozens, maybe hundreds of tracks simultaneously, but these sound more basic and nowhere near as intense. Still, plenty of fun, mangled beats and sounds, just not quite as developed as their proper releases.
September 29, 2013 at 2:41 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Jordan Piper Philips: Back To Sleep tape
I keep meaning to post about my adoration for all things Blanche Blanche Blanche/OSR Tapes.
Wink With Both Eyes was my favorite album of last year, and there’s an astonishing amount of music from this camp that’s been released in the past few years, much of which is available for
free download. This tape was released last year by
Singapore Sling Tapes, an incredible label home to Piper Spray, Giant Claw, and many others I haven’t fully explored yet. This is a solo tape by the guy from BBB, but it’s definitely in line with their brand of warped lo-fi ADD-pop (or at least their older style, they’ve actually started recording in a studio recently). Lots of demo-quality keyboards, stumbling electronic drums, unnecessarily complicated time signatures, and unlikely earworm melodies. There’s a few covers here (Royal Trux, Ariel Pink, The Cure’s “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”), but it all fits the sort of alternate dimension AM radio vibe. Check it out
here.
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