The Answer Is In The Beat

Robert Hampson: Répercussions (Editions Mego, 2012)

September 14, 2013 at 8:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This album is released both in a stereo CD version and a 5.1 surround DVD-Audio version, but I tried playing the DVD in my laptop and it didn’t make any sound, so I don’t know what the difference between the two mixes is. Anyway, this is an electro-acoustic work by an artist best known for being part of Main, Loop and Godflesh, and it utilizes treated and manipulated piano and percussion instruments. Just listening on my laptop speakers, there’s plenty of shifting and fractalizing between the speakers, which sounds pretty interesting, but I can see why you’d need to have the 5.1 mix played on surround speakers, particularly as part of an installation of some sort. As it is, there’s some pretty interesting mutating textures, but like the previous Robert Hampson release I got a review promo of, I feel like there’s something missing just by listening to it, it feels like there’s supposed to be a visual/multimedia element that isn’t represented just by listening to the disc. Of the three tracks, the shortest, “Antarctica Ends Here” (dedicated to John Cale and named after his song “Antarctica Starts Here”) seems to be the warmest and most inviting, with clear piano notes and resounding violin-like drones.

Liz Christine: Sweet Mellow Cat (flau, 2012)

September 14, 2013 at 7:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dream-like collage utilizing piano loops, found sounds, nature sounds, dialogue, music box-like melodies, and lots of animal sounds, particularly dogs, frogs and cats. The cats don’t particularly sound that mellow, actually, they sound kind of irritated sometimes. There’s not a whole lot of logic to this album, it’s very fluid and random and structureless, and that is fine by me. Not a whole lot in the way of beats or rhythm, except the bluesy slide guitar and slowly shifting electronic beats on “Dinah”. A few tracks have eerie dialogue samples saying “I love you”, or talking about loving something. Tracks like “Or Ten Pills AT Three O’Clock” and “C Caterina”, with glitched/warped easy listening samples/loops, definitely remind me of People Like Us, but without referencing obvious songs or melodies, as PLU often does. There seems to be an unnerving layer of hiss and static during the later songs on this album. And the disc ends very suddenly with a slap and a shout, much like something sharp occurring in a dream can quickly snap you awake.

Mind Over Mirrors: When The Rest Are Up At Four (Immune, 2013)

September 14, 2013 at 4:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Jaime Fennelly of Peeesseye started releasing solo synth/harmonium-drone as Mind Over Mirrors a few years ago, and is already up to his fourth LP, in addition to a tape on Digitalis Limited and a 7″. This is his first album on the Immune label out of Chicago, and it is tremendous. Really lovely Berlin School-style synth patterns, but nice layers of guitar fuzz and slightly warped organ textures. After the first 3 songs, the album gets a bit dirgelike with “Innumerable Step” (featuring fellow Digitalis alumni Scott Tuma), picks the momentum up a little bit with “Bark & Barge”, then plunges fathoms below with the 18-minute drone “Heights & The Deeper”.

Devotion: In Love We Stand Alone (Brave Mysteries, 2013)

September 13, 2013 at 10:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Ethereal gothic neo-folk, similar to Dead Can Dance. Cavernous operatic female vocals, droning acoustic instruments, and pastoral folk melodies. 8-minute opener “Guardian” floats spectre-like for its first half, settling upon a slow strumming rhythm for its second. “Charism” has soft pounding drums and lute-like strumming, and spoken male vocals about deliverance and perpetual light. 2-minute “Pattern Of Sanctuary” has sorrowful strings, the most abrasive guitar sounds on the disc, and double-tracked female vocals, one of which may or may not be singing backwards. “In Love We Stand Alone” is a moving ballad with resounding strummed acoustic guitars, mariachi horns, and gorgeous vocals. The disc ends with a 12 minute droney remix by Nathaniel Ritter (Circulation Of Light), which maintains a bit of an acoustic pulse for the first half, but then drifts into hissing electronics and minimal vocals for the second half, with a brief bit of organ during the song’s final seconds.

Kine: Meditations In April Green (Alrealon Musique, 2013)

September 8, 2013 at 10:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Droney, sometimes noisy meditative music by a group featuring Vietnamese vocalist Dao Anh Khanh, as well as members of PAS Musique. The vocals on here are an acquired taste and I couldn’t get into them at first, but they’re spirited, joyous, and ultimately transcendent. The first meditation here builds on a relaxed, almost bluesy (or at least Blues Control-y) rhythmic loop, before Khanh’s gruff, sometimes wailing vocals set in. The track takes its sweet time layering in synth textures and guitar lines. Around 13 minutes, the vocals are delivered through a vocoder and the music breaks from the rhythm and enters a more concentrated state. The second movement has a really nice synth texture to it which for some reason reminds me of Toro Y Moi but droned out, minimal and ambient, plus there’s this buzzing motor feedback sound behind it which might be a bit distracting for something more poppy and polished, but works fine here. This texture/loop kind of disappears after 7 or 8 minutes, after which we’re left with a bunch of mysterious, squirmy echoed sounds and more ecstatic, sometimes laughing vocals. Movement 3 has another soft, minimal rhythm, and lots of wild flute blowing, plus plenty of feedback guitar in its second half. Movement 4 is the shortest (just 5 minutes) and has lots of whooshing synths, and vocals and rushing feedback which build to an ecstatic climax. The final movement is the calmest, with bits of meandering guitar, until more whooshing synths build during the second half and more vocals worm their way in.

Holy Balm: It’s You (Not Not Fun, 2012)

September 7, 2013 at 7:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

When I saw this group at SXSW, there was a huge crowd at the front of the small, seated venue in the back of the coffee shop that they played at. The shop’s staff kept telling everyone that this was a fire hazard and that everyone needed to get back in their seats, but everyone just shrugged it off and said “who cares? this is dance music.” This album captures the sounds of what they do live, but of course the crowd adds more energy. But it’s a fun album, usually maintaining a lo-fi 4/4 pulse with echoed vocals, not quite as psych as a lot of NNF bands but not as polished and deep as the 100% Silk stuff. There’s plenty of post-punk nods, from the Y Pants cover “Favourite Sweater” to “Losing Control” which reminds one a little bit of a certain Joy Division song. “Phone Song” is probably my favorite, it just seems like the track that would mix best in a DJ set, with plenty of interesting layers of vocals and synths, I think it has more of a minimal techno build than the rest of the tracks. “Take It” is slower heads close to Nite Jewel lo-fi slow-jam territory, and “Town Called Hope” keeps this slower tempo, but “One & Only” ends the album back up to house tempo, with extensive use of rave sirens over its 8.5 minute groove.

Zero Centigrade: Umber CDr (Observatoire, 2012) + Selce CDr (Nothing Out There, 2012)

September 7, 2013 at 7:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Two albums of electro-acoustic improv from an Italian duo. Usually very minimal, kind of a detuned Jandek feel, with spare guitar pluckings, stray trumpet lines, and brief bursts of feedback. There’s also some blues slide guitar on tracks such as the aptly named “Broken Slide” and “A Strange Season #1”. “City Of Motors” is the most immediately striking track on Umber, starting with a stuttering buzz, then flatly but frantically wailing in one direction for its duration. “Blood And Dust” seems to get a little more caustic, with a bit more anxious electrified drone creeping in.

Selce is shorter, only containing 5 tracks instead of the 12 on Umber, although these 5 tracks stretch past 36 minutes total. It’s hard to really say if there’s much of a difference; this one’s not necessarily more minimal, but maybe a bit less caustic. “Dogmouth” gets a slight bit doomy for a few moments, with some loudly strummed bass chords, but otherwise it’s as minimal and slow-moving as usual.

Alfred 23 Harth/Carl Stone: Gift Fig CDr (Kendra Steiner Editions, 2012)

September 7, 2013 at 5:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Free jazz reed player Alfred Harth’s career stretches back to the early 70s, and he’s released music on ECM and ReR and worked with Fred Frith and Otomo Yoshihide, among many others. Carl Stone is also a long-running experimental composer who has been making music since the early ’70s, who studied with Morton Sobotnick and James Tenney. On this collaboration, Harth takes radical approaches to playing the saxophone (including bowing, playing the keys and springs as percussion, and usage of air and spit), and Carl Stone manipulates this with his laptop, transforming it into deranged bird noises, cutting in voices, and fragmenting it into pieces. There’s no clear rhythm here, it’s all free-flowing, chopped up, and possibly designed to confuse. At its most active, such as the first track, it’s pretty exciting. The last track is a 22 minute epic which will positively fry your brain, if the previous half hour didn’t already.

Bobby Browser: Still Browsing 12″ EP (100% Silk, 2013)

September 6, 2013 at 11:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

You might be able to tell that I buy a hell of a lot of NNF/100% Silk releases, simply because most of them are incredible. This one’s been a favorite as of late, just really classy late-night house. Lots of pretty, melodic synth-strings, some flutes during “Theme From Tony’s Party”, and perfectly placed vocal snippets. “Airplane Mode” has probably the biggest late-’80s Detroit vibe to it, particularly the drum machine and synth bassline, but the cloppy electronic bongos and chilled out chords take it somewhere else. “Baby Dre” is a slower-tempo number which could be a Soul II Soul instrumental, except it has seagulls and waves in the background, and a somewhat unexpected synth melody which shows up during a breakdown, and sounds a bit different from the rest of the track but fits very well. This record feels like it could run the risk of being too swanky and smoothed-out, but it just works so well and it just feels good listening to it.

[tlr]: Homunculus (naboamusic, 2012)

September 6, 2013 at 10:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

naboamusic has been pretty quiet so far this year, but there’s been a few releases that I just downloaded that I need to listen to more and post about. But here’s one they sneaked out towards the end of last year that shouldn’t be ignored. Another mysterious artist that I couldn’t tell you anything about, but plenty of frazzled chopped-up beats and menacing yet playful melodies. Sounds like some clarinet sounds in “Gzngztrzm”. After a few tracks of splintered glitchcore, you think “Jungular” is going to be a massive jungle rinser, but it ends up being a 6-minute glacial piano drone. “Blisster” starts outs like it’s rising out of bed, but then turns into severely frantic, stepping-on-itself glitch-spazzery, end then ends after barely a minute. “Crystalline Space Entity” is the most bass-heavy, d’n’b-influenced breakcore track here, but still with a cracked lo-fi cheapcore aesthetic.