The Answer Is In The Beat

El Fog: Reverberate Slowly (Moteer, 2007/reissued flau, 2012) + Masayoshi Fujita: Stories (flau, 2012)

September 6, 2013 at 10:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

A few years ago, I reviewed El Fog’s second album Rebuilding Vibes for Foxy Digitalis. This was a fantastic album of minimal glitch-dub, utilizing vibraphone as the primary instrument, and totally reconstructing the possibilities of what that instrument can create. Now flau has made the project’s original album available again, along with some bonus remixes. The album seems a bit more easily categorized as downtempo dubby minimal techno, with a crackly 4/4 beat thumping away on many tracks, but also a homespun layer of distortion along with the vibraphone, sort of resembling a more jazz-influenced version of Pole’s early works. Of course, it’s hard not to compare this work to Jan Jelinek circa Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, and sure enough, Jelinek contributes a remix here, combining two of the album’s tracks for a beat-free track with very minimal, subtle glitching and gliding. There’s also a great track called “Deep Sea And Stars” which was previously only available on a compilation, and a very minimal remix El Fog did for NQ, which just seems to consist of a low pulse and some very faint crackling sounds.

Masayoshi Fujita has released a few albums under his own name in collaboration with Jan Jelinek, on Jelinek’s Faitiche label, but Stories is his solo debut. Instead of electronics, this is a minimalist neo-classical album for vibraphone and strings. Really lovely, melodic/rhythmic gamelan-like music that fans of minimalist composers will dig. “Deers” is really driving and straightforward, “Snow Storm” is covered in a cloud of reverb but it does have a clearly discernable melody/rhythm. The track entitled “Cloud” is appropriately more droning, slow and atmospheric. “The Story Of Forest” is where the strings come in, slowly and tenderly along with the melodic vibraphone. “Story Of Waterfall I. & II.” is a longer, more abstract vibraphone piece with varying dynamics. “Swan And Morning Dews” is more slow, atmospheric vibraphone with a hint of strings. “River” is probably the most upfront, vibrant mix of vibraphone and strings, plus some sort of fuzzy percussion sound, either some sort of digital processing or maybe prepared vibraphone? “Memories Of The Wind” is another slow, quiet vibraphone piece. The whole album is extremely beautiful, dreamy, and full of wonder.

The Big Ship: Split tape (Hausu Mountain, 2012) + A Circle Is Forever (Hausu Mountain, 2013)

September 6, 2013 at 9:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

So way at the beginning of the year, Hausu Mountain sent me some tapes and I never got around to reviewing them, even though I was really into the Moth Cock tape (which I finally just reviewed). A few weeks ago I went to Chicago to see Negativland and surprisingly enough, there was a Hausu Mountain merch table. Good Willsmith was the opening band at the show, and they’re associated with this label. So I ended up buying some more tapes (which I hopefully won’t take 8 months to review) and listened to the older tapes to finally get around to reviewing them. The Big Ship tape that I got isn’t their proper album, but a tape containing a solo side each by the two members of the group. Doug Kaplan’s is “The Suboceanic Mantle”, an electrified drone with fiery waves gradually flaring up, creating some sort of ghastly effects chorus. Aeron Small’s “Bowshock At The Heliosphere” is much more calm and peaceful, building ethereal guitar loops cocooned in tape fuzz. There’s a few human imperfections that are kept in (knocking sounds, etc.) and it just sounds completely relaxing and warm.

The band’s proper album A Circle Is Forever isn’t solo improvisations, but group compositions, with other musicians contributing. The album combines gentle folk-pop, utilizing plucked acoustic instruments, to more experimental textures, with field recordings, backwards sounds and voices, and analog synths. “Goose & Abel” is grounded in a continuous acoustic guitar solo, but around this you hear city sounds, bird calls, typing, rushing water, and watery, fluttery, garbled synth textures. “The Silver Standard” is a slow, electrified comedown jam, and “Old Film Negative” is a bit reminiscent of the somewhat more emo-leaning side of ’90s post-rock. “A Circle Is Forever” ends the album with a bright, sunny Krautrock-inspired jam, with a steady rhythm, gauzy synths, and free jazz saxophone.

Moth Cock: Bremmy tape (Hausu Mountain, 2012)

September 6, 2013 at 8:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I’ll probably never get to the bottom of the ridiculous ever-growing pile of tapes that has been sitting on my desk ever since Foxy Digitalis went kaput, but I would be seriously remiss if I didn’t pay some special attention to this brainmangler. All the info this tape provides is that one person plays trumpet and electronics and the other plays clarinet and that it was recorded live. That might leave a bit up to the imagination, but what you actually hear is beyond anything you could’ve imagined. This is simply bizarre, alien circus music that doesn’t sound like something that was thought up by humans. Sure, there’s traces of clarinet and trumpet, but they get twisted and perverted into something really grotesque and silly and strange, and it keeps folding in on itself and getting stranger and more confounding. The first side is a near-18-minute piece called “D. Kiss” which somehow arrives at these chomped-up music box sounds and haunted acid-clown funhouse mirror jazz, then somehow riding a bliss-wave on a warped polka-dot surfboard. On the other side, “Call Merk” goes for a more rhythmic Black Dice approach, but with lots of buzzing and honking. Both parts of “Lil Elk” are squishy and drippy and make you feel like you’ve taken a shower in some thick gloopy blue substance that you’re not sure if you want to know what it’s made of. This is just simply a tape you have to hear to believe, and it’s a free download over at Bandcamp.

Sir Stephen: House Of Regalia LP (100% Silk, 2012)

September 2, 2013 at 4:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Somehow I didn’t get around to posting about this before, but I’ve been in awe of this album for a while. Total pastiche of early ’90s house music, the beats, the samples, the melodies, the artwork, it’s totally something that could’ve come out in 1991 and would have been easily forgotten about 3 years later. One song even has both the “yeah! woo!” loop and the slide whistles from that Deee-Lite song. And yet somehow it just sounds really fresh and well-produced. Just straight up fun dance music. Plus the “H” on the album cover looks like a house. This album’s too much, really.

Interplanetary Prophets: Zero Hour 12″ (Planet Mu, 2013)

September 2, 2013 at 3:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Collaboration EP between Ital and Hieroglyphic Being. I don’t own any other records by either artist, but I like what I’ve heard, especially “Ital’s Theme”, which I immediately thought sounded like it could’ve been on an early µ-Ziq release, so it only made sense that he started releasing albums on Planet Mu. The tracks on this 12″ don’t seem to build and progress in the same way as a lot of the other Ital tracks I’ve heard, it seems more like it’s a bunch of jam sessions edited down, especially in the way the A side fades out after 13 minutes. The B-side is a little more concise, and “Zero Hour” (the standout track) has DBX-esque vocals, and a minimal beat with plenty of spacey echo. And then the record ends with “Running Out Of Time”, a standstill ambient track which feels like being caught in a threshold.

Lazy: Obsession LP (Moniker Records, 2013)

September 2, 2013 at 2:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

There are many bands called Lazy, so just to clarify, this is the debut LP by a Kansas City garage punk band, following a 7″ last year which contains 3 songs that are also on this album. It’s on Moniker Records, the label founded by Robert Cole Manis, who brought Death’s …For The Whole World To See to Drag City. Moniker Records also released the Stacian album, which was one of my favorites of last year. Anyway, this is X-ish garage punk with male/female vocals, pretty upbeat and melodic, a little sloppy but pretty fun. Not quite as slacker-y as the name would imply. “Grave” throws in some Misfits horror-punk. “Silence In Crisis” starts with a shadowy dialogue sample saying “I think punk rock is stronger than it ever was”, before diving headfirst into a choppy, punchy drumbeat. “Bring It Up” is the only long song here at nearly 5 minutes, and starts with a really slowly building intro, the drums don’t come in until about 1:20. Also, “Psychic Jelly” ends half a minute before the track actually ends (the last 30 seconds are silent). Other than that, short and sweet, over in 22 minutes, so overall won’t take up too much of your time.

Xander Harris megapost

September 2, 2013 at 12:30 am | Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

Xander Harris headlined the Not Not Fun showcase at SXSW this year, and he was definitely one of the artists I was looking forward to seeing the most (but every set was fantastic). 2011’s Urban Gothic LP on NNF was a seriously great collection of lo-fi horror-disco, and his performance and recent releases have been equally exciting.

I bought a few items from his merch table, and I’ll start off talking about the tape he released on C.G.I Friday. I didn’t realize at first that this was actually a split with a group called The Crow, I thought it was just a Xander tape called The Crow. It’s pretty short, there’s 4 songs per side and they’re all around 2-4 minutes long. Xander’s songs have his typical shambling lo-fi beatbox feel, with electro beats and some almost Orbital-ish textures during “Hard Candy”. “It’s The Eyes” has some dialog samples that sound like they’re punched in using the cheapest of keyboards. “Kull Wahad” starts off subdued and downtempo, but launches into a rickety electro beat towards the end. Couldn’t tell you a think about The Crow, but their side is pretty solid synth-pop, with shadowy vocals operating out of one speaker. Curiously, “Syndicate” only consists of drum programming, I’m wondering if there were supposed to be other elements added on top, but somehow only the beats made it to the tape. “Dreams Never End” is also instrumental, but there’s a driving melody to it, and no, it’s not a New Order cover.

Possibly my favorite Xander Harris track so far is “The Driver” from his split 7″ with Dylan Ettinger, which Moon Glyph released last year. Such a basic, slamming beat, a lovely Italo-esque melody, and hard-panned percussive blasts. Definitely a mainstay of my gym MP3 player. Dylan Ettinger’s “Tipoff” is as awesome as any of his recent synth-pop material, further combining spooky lo-fi synth textures, Italo-inspired arpeggios and echo-slathered vocals. It seems a bit miniature compared to the tracks on Lifetime Of Romance, which is probably to be expected as this is just a track on a 7″ rather than on an album.

Last year, Harris released kind of an under-the-radar CDr on Ruralfaune’s SynthSeries imprint, called Poison Belt. This album seems a slight bit more experimental than some of his other stuff, it’s slower and not as dancey, but it still shows kind of a dark yet playful sense of humor. The track “Suburban Gothic” obviously references his 2011 album title, but it also seems fitting as this release seems to be kind of a less flashy, more backwoods variation on his sound.

Harris contributed a track to a compilation LP last year on Unseen Forces, called Grave Command: All Hallowed Hymns. The artwork is ghoulish and impressive, and the picture disc is absolutely beautiful, but most of the music is various forms of metal and isn’t really my thing, but there’s some highlights. Ghoul begins the album with a couple minutes of church organ and maniacal laughing. Occultation’s “All Hallows Fire” has a really cool delay-heavy doom-psych sound and Nico-ish female vocals, I enjoy that track a lot. The Xander Harris track is called “The Piper Of Soggoth”, and is a lot more of a straightforward horror-synth theme than his usual work, starting out beatless and then surprise attacking you with a bassline and galloping synth-drums before it ends. Danava’s “Grave Command (Main Theme)” ends the album and is pretty short and minimal, has a curious pulsing beat and chirping synths, and ends with a slowing heartbeat, but feels like more of a short segue scene than anything major.

Earlier this year, Not Not Fun released The New Dark Age Of Love, the proper follow-up to Urban Gothic. I bought it a few months ago but I’m finally just getting around to listening to it now. First track “Night Fortress” made me think it was going to be a whole album of dancier tracks like “The Driver”, but it switches from soundtrack-like pieces to broken electro to slower witch-house tracks. “Vultures Of Tenderness” starts with a slow, ticking beat, and then heads straight up into suspenseful cosmic disco territory, and sounds simply wonderful. “Red Sky Sprawl” has memorable trancey synths and a kicking ’80s soundtrack electro-beat, which goes 4/4 at the end. Album closer “Clear Expensive Skies” has probably the most straightforward pounding beat and progression, and is as clear and shining as its title suggests.

M. Geddes Gengras megapost

September 1, 2013 at 10:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

M. Geddes Gengras’ newest LP on Umor Rex has been getting quite a bit of attention lately, but it’s actually a collection of pieces from various limited cassette releases of his instrumental Moog works that he’s been releasing over the years. I have a few of his recent releases and I’ve been meaning to post about them for a while. First and foremost, what really got me into his work was his LP Test Leads which came out on Holy Mountain/Intercoastal Artists. The artwork totally looks like a reproduction of a ’70s/’80s-era Berlin school kosmische LP, the back cover says “New works for modular synthesizer” and features a black & white photo of Gengras in a suit and tie peering over a maze of wires, knobs and switches, and the font listing the songs and times looks straight out of the early digital era. The music fits accordingly, exploring arpeggiated synth textures, but also dipping into some rhythmic beat-based territory, such as the techno track “Night Work”, and getting jittery with the frantic, swarming “Cairo” and the brain-frying “Waldorf (Pt. 3)”. A thoroughly enjoyable LP.

Also pretty great is the Santam Rasa tape which came out last year on Healing Power Records. Definitely more of a paranoid soundtrack vibe, with more atmospheric synth washes and hissing, squealing noises, and also some icy pulsations. It just keeps building and getting more epic and impressive. Hard to say whether I like this tape or Test Leads better, they’re both astounding in different ways.

The Re-Vision tape on Cae-Sur-A is a bit different, it’s a lot rougher and murkier, and it didn’t stand out as much on first listen. Still, it has some nice buzzing, rippling textures. It moves pretty slowly, it doesn’t quite hit you as immediately as the other 2 releases, but it has kind of a muddy, airplane-loudly-buzzing-across-the-horizon feeling to it. Much more of a singular vision, not as varied or progressive.

Sensate Focus megapost

September 1, 2013 at 8:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

When Mark Fell started releasing new material on Raster-Noton, Editions Mego and a few other labels a few years ago, both as part of SND and under his own name, I tried wrapping my head around it and I just wasn’t getting into it. It just sort of sounded like it was continually butting its head against a wall and didn’t really go anywhere. But gradually, especially since he started releasing material as Sensate Focus last year, it just began to make more and more sense to me. The Sentielle Objectif Actualité album in particular was something I had on repeat for a long time (especially at the gym, oddly enough) and it made me seek out as many of his recent works as both Mark Fell and Sensate Focus as I could. I missed out on the first Sensate Focus 12″ but I have all the others. The first 3 12″s were actually remixed into the Sentielle LP, so it covers similar terrain, some of the same sounds and textures, but they’re still pretty different. Not sure I can say which versions are more accessible, they all seem to follow precise yet oblong rhythms, sort of heading towards 4/4 rhythms but with the corners bent a little. The versions on the Sensate Focus 12″s utilize more vocal samples that suggest house, and some calm atmospheric synths, but the rhythms are still fractured a bit, yet mostly at consistent paces. Hard to tell which of these tracks is the biggest hit, but side X of Sensate Focus 2.5 has a little bit more of a future-pop sensibility to it. Sensate Focus 2 is a collaboration with Mark Fell’s SND bandmate Mat Steel, and seems to blossom a bit more melodically than the previous 12″s. And the latest release in the series, Sensate Focus 1.6, is a collaboration with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay), and pushes into more complex beat patterns as well as more epic builds. Side Y in particular is a total mind-melter.

Most of the Sensate Focus 12″s are on their own sub-label of eMego, but the project’s most full-length statement is the Déviation Heat-Treated LP on Pan, which remixes Heatsick’s lo-fi Casio house into a throbbing, jittery, buzzing epic. The Casio tones aren’t really as evident here, but there are some snatches of voices, and some very finely chopped garage-house synths. As staccato and knotty as the beats and samples are, they’re paced at such even patterns and sometimes combined with airy synths, so it actually gets pretty easy to follow, at least definitely compared to the stuff Mark Fell was releasing 4 years ago. I’ve heard Sensate Focus refer to as “tidy house”, and while it might confuse a lot of people a lot of people who have a pretty clear definition of what house is, there definitely isn’t anything messy about it.

Infinity Shred: Sanctuary (Paracadute, 2013)

August 28, 2013 at 10:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

New alias of chiptune duo Starscream, who had to change their name for legal reasons. This has some element of 8-bit-ness to it, but it’s mostly epic synth-heavy post-rock with downtempo electronic beats, definitely closer to earlier M83, but with post-dubstep/trap drum programming, and some trance arpeggios. Also vaguely reminds me of 65daysofstatic, but I’m not sure why, because it’s not as fast, furious, loud, or guitar-heavy, but it is definitely some form of epic electronic post-rock. Definitely feels like late-night stargazing music. The few of us who actually liked the last Emeralds album will be into this too. “Shadow Jeweler” and “Straylight” seem pretty similar melody-wise, and “Mapper” and “Sanctuary” have synth arpeggios that are maybe a little closer to Umberto and other horror-disco revivalists.