August 28, 2013 at 9:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Clay Rendering: Vengeance Candle 12″
New project of Mike Connelly (Hair Police, Failing Lights, ex-Wolf Eyes) and his wife Tara Connelly. Unlike most Wolf Eyes related projects, this release hasn’t been preceded by dozens/hundreds of ultra-limited tape or CD-r releases; it’s the first and so far only release by the project. Easily Connelly’s most song-based project. Slow and brooding, and with gliding guitars and loudly whispered vocals. Swans-y and apocalyptic, but not quite as abrasive as you might expect. A slight bit of electronic pulse, and some drums that sort of drag behind the rest of the sounds. The guitar feedback seems to take center stage. “Vengeance Candle” ends with a bit of accordion, which is nice.
August 28, 2013 at 6:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Kid Smpl: Armour EP
Spacious downtempo electronic music. Kind of sounds like what would happen if dubstep got its heart completely broken and devastated, but still whimpered along anyway. Disembodied/pitched vocals, airy/watery sounds, lots of echo. Snatches of bass and chopped-up breaks. “Necklace” is the closest this gets to a solid beat, but still not quite worked up to really be considered dance music. “Breathing In Space” is completely ambient, with only flickers of vocals and sub-bass poking out of the wave of synths washing over. Free download at
Bandcamp.
August 24, 2013 at 11:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Olekranon: Danaus
Olekranon continues to be one of the most prolific under-the-radar experimental artists in music. This is his first release in a few years to have proper full-color packaging instead of a handmade cardboard sleeve, but it’s still a CD-r limited to 100 copies. It also seems more diverse than usual Olekranon releases, moving from hazy industrial drone to minimal techno-influenced beatscapes to bashy MBM-ish breakbeats and samples to bludgeoning feedback and sludgy beats (4) to crisp, crunchy midtempo noise-beat-drone. After a clangy, fuzzy interlude, “Severed” is a horizon-like drone with some crackling feedback at the end. “Marionette” is droning post-rock with crushing beats. “Fayad” is shivery, disheveled drone with a thumpy beat and a trace of sadness underneath all the bitter frustration. “Delicate Times” is a short feedback loop drone, and “Libertine” ends the album with nearly 8 minutes of softly pulsating cloud-drone. Available for purchase at
Bandcamp, which also has several older Olekranon releases for download, most of which are free.
August 24, 2013 at 10:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Eleven Pond: Assemblage LP
Eleven Pond’s solo LP Bas Relief was released in 1986, and was reissued by Dark Entries in 2009, the first release on that label. This band only lasted for about a year after the release of that LP, but there were plenty of additional tracks recorded, so here’s a long-awaited release of this previously unheard material. It’s actually kind of mindblowing to hear some of these songs and hear that they were unreleased rehearsals and demos. And it’s also pretty crazy that this band was from a town like Rochester, NY, because they sound like they could’ve been a British band on Factory. “Watching Trees” from the previous LP appears here as a “bedroom demo”, but it just sounds so complete and familiar. It totally sounds like a song that could’ve been a huge ’80s goth club hit, but for some reason it wasn’t. And it’s not the only song on here that sounds like it could’ve been popular. “Blood Ruins Film” has arpeggiating synths, big metallic guitars, and ’80s synth-drums, and it’s kind of overwhelming for such a lo-fi new wave song. “Turn To Silence” is a seriously sweet, heartfelt melodic new wave song that could’ve been in some cheesy ’80s teen romance movie. “Green & Gold” is another starstruck, dramatic anthem with more awesome arpeggios, and a really cool crazy-edit breakdown. “Land Of Yellow” is slightly less polished and more scratchy and demo-ish, and is another sweetly catchy lonely-teen anthem about dreaming in candle light.
August 24, 2013 at 9:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Nagamatzu: Shatter Days
Dark Entries released a 1986 cassette by Nagamatzu on LP back in 2010, and now they’re releasing this LP containing 4 of the 5 songs on their debut tape from 1983. Side B is all compilation tracks and an unreleased track. Minimal drum machine, atmospheric synth and bass guitar, mostly instrumental. Not super dark, but not happy either. “Possession” has echoing spoken word vocals. “Deliberation” actually does have a pretty bright melody, and interesting layered elements. “She Speaks Close” also has some minimal spoken vocals, maybe sort of resembles a very minimal version of Skinny Puppy. “Bird, Spider, Fly” is more upbeat and also has some disembodied voices floating around and being played backwards, and also kind of a proto
Twin Peaks chord progression. “Radio Song” is a later unreleased track and seems a little bit more spiffed up than the earlier tracks.
August 24, 2013 at 9:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dark Day: Hands In The Dark 12″
Dark Entries finishes reissuing the early Dark Day catalog on vinyl, following the reissues of the Exterminating Angel and Window LPs, with both tracks from the “Hands In The Dark” 7″ (recorded 1978/released 1979), plus the second side of the “Trapped” 12″ (recorded 1979/released 1981). “Hands In The Dark” is a stone-cold classic of the minimal-synth genre, and was compiled on Soul Jazz’s
New York Noise 3 comp a while back, plus it was covered by Chromatics on the first After Dark comp on Italians Do It Better. Pure nervous darkwave synth, with twitchy drums and chilling synths, and queasy vocals. It’s over before you know it (2:26) and you’re not sure what just happened. “Invisible Man” is slightly longer (2:52) and slower, and doesn’t feel quite as tense, but it’s still quite terrifying. Especially the slashing guitar towards the end, and the lyrics about “my other twin who left to join me, sometimes it doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh.” Side B is sort of a remix of tracks from “Exterminating Angel”; the label that released that album wanted to release a 12″ single from the album, but they chose the slowest, longest song on the album, and released it months after the album came out, so R.L. Crutchfield decided to play portions of the album backwards with effects added, and released it as the B-side. The 6 “Exterminations” are each about a minute long and just consist of backwards beats and synth rhythms. Part 5 has some warped guitar trails and is probably the most haunting movement of the 6.
August 9, 2013 at 10:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
His Electro Blue Voice: Ruthless Sperm
Whoa! Somehow I wasn’t expecting this to be as relentless and aggressive and noisy, yet accessible, as it is. Maybe the name made me think it was going to be synth-pop or something. Instead, it’s closer to the kind of noisy alt-rock Sub Pop made its name releasing, except this has a little bit of a goth/death-rock thing to it. Killing Joke is definitely a big reference point here. Opener “Death Climb” is like a less electronic version of a Wolf Eyes fist-banger, and “Spit Dirt” is a long repetitive Kraut-rocky thing, but it’s so tense and paranoid, especially if you read the lyric sheet. My god, these lyrics are frustrated and troubled and bleak. Sometimes it truly comes through in the music, but other times it’s somehow a bit more dulled down, especially on the longer tracks, I think they get more to the point with the shorter ones. “Sea Bug” definitely has a big anthemic ’80s college rock quality to it, reminding me of Husker Du quite a bit, with a big pounding rhythm, wall-of-sound guitars and a great guitar melody repeating and building throughout the second half of the song, plus heavily (Italian) accented vocals. “Tumor” is a short, pounding, almost industrial blast, with shouted vocals (pretty shocking, FCC-unsafe lyrics) and a feedback breakdown in the middle, and some squiggly acid synth ending the song. “The Path” is deceptively uptempo and melodic, disguising more terrifying (and also FCC-unfriendly) lyrics. “Born/Tired” almost sounds like it could be a Pixies song, but instead of the loud intro/quiet verse/loud chorus/etc. formula, it starts with a more melodic part and shouted lyrics, barrels on with the same repetitive rhythm and cools down, starting with softer, almost whispered vocals, and then instrumental guitar and piano soloing. “Red Earth” ends the album on this more calmed-down mode, with deceptively cool/clean-sounding guitars, keyboards and drums, but quite creepy (and, again, FCC-unsafe) lyrics. Also it fades out at about 5:45, is silent for about 15 seconds, and then the last minute is slitherning keyboards and a spooky voice that almost sounds like it’s being choked.
August 9, 2013 at 10:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Lumerians: The High Frontier
Seriously good psych-kraut-space-rock. Intricate synth and guitar melodies, drum machines and live drums, droning organ, and non-obscured vocals. I don’t know why this album surprised me as much as it did, maybe I heard something by them before and wasn’t into it, but this album is just really well done. The songs generally run about 5 or 6 minutes, but they don’t seem to go on too long or get bogged down with endless soloing. They stay fresh and energetic and even funky, in a Can sort of way, especially “High Frontier”. “Koman Tong” is sort of like Afrobeat space-rock. “Smokies Tangle” is instrumental, and “Life Without Skin” starts with spoken female vocals in Spanish, before kicking into a faster, chase-like rhythm, then calming down with wordless vocals and vibraphone (or similar instrument), and then heating up with a hot organ sound and hand percussion. Really solid stuff.
August 9, 2013 at 9:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Henry & Hazel Slaughter: Endless Power Cycle
Fedora Corpse presents the first non-American Tapes release by Henry & Hazel Slaughter, a new solo venture of John Olson from Wolf Eyes. This is supposedly his “demented techno project”, according to a little note sent with this promo, but it’s not even close to the sort of actually danceable techno that Moon Pool & Dead Band do. This is seriously corroded, staggering, stuttering, short-circuiting dead-drunk electronic music, with swarming synth-scapes, noise bursts, backwards beats, and oblong rhythms. In Wolf Eyes terms, it emphasizes the shuddering, thudding drum machine rhythms, does away with vocals and guitar thrashing, and mostly frames the noise onto distorting the jagged, skipping machine rhythms. If you want to try to frame this in a dance music context, this might be like going to some illegal dance party, drinking something far more spiked than you expected, and when you sit down you feel like you’re in an electric chair, while the DJ keeps trainwrecking and all his records are skipping. At one point (A5) it sounds like the DJ’s just cueing up records, as the rhythm keeps fading out and coming back in like it’s just a bunch of preview clips. On side B some dub spectres come to haunt the place, turning the place into some sort of haunted electrified dancehall. But even these ghosts seem more concerned with flying and crashing around and breaking stuff and causing physical damage than actually having a dance party. Totally fun stuff. Of course, the record is pressed to highlighter yellow see-through vinyl, so it’s hard to tell which track is which, and there’s no track titles anyway, so it’s not the easiest record to DJ with, but that’s not the point. Also, side A ends in a locked groove, but the track itself has such a pattering, skipping rhythm that it sounds like a locked groove already, except you’re wondering why you can hear subtle differences in the electronic droning in the background, so that when it actually does reach the locked groove, you don’t even notice it’s just repeating and not actually evolving, but you still feel like you hear different sounds coming in and out of the mix somehow.
August 7, 2013 at 11:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Julia Holter: Loud City Song
WCBN’s former music director continues her upward trajectory in the music world, delivering easily her most accessible and most exquisitely orchestrated album to date. First-rate orchestral avant-pop with lots of strings and horns, continents away from the lo-fi stuff she was doing half a decade ago. As with all of her music, this is going to take a long time for me to fully digest and appreciate, and opener “World” doesn’t do a whole lot for me at first, but immediately “Maxim’s I” is striking me as a truly gorgeous song. “Horns Surrounding Me” starts with close-miked running and whispering, then has minimalist organ, a “Running Up That Hill” type rhythm, and all manners of experimental yet accessible textures. “In The Green World” is the first single, and seems like a peculiar choice at first; it takes a couple minutes to really reveal itself and turn into a hummable song, but it’s representative of the album in that way. “Hello Stranger” is another slowly revealing, and very gorgeous ballad draped in reverb and strings, that sounds like it’s from the most ethereal musical ever made. “Maxim’s II” is a weirder, less ethereal, more skronky and kind of dissonant version of “Maxim’s I” (same lyrics). “He’s Running Through My Eyes” is another short piano, string and vocal piece. “This Is A True Heart” starts with trombone and some synths that can’t help but remind me of certain moments of The KLF’s
Chill Out, before Julia’s vocals and a drum and standup bass rhythm come in, plus some horns and mysterious background sounds (running, car horn honking, maybe). A classy, sophisticated tune. “City Appearing” is a slow, drifting tune with a calm drumbeat and standup bass. It kind of drifts away and leaves your mind somewhere else and then album ends before you know it.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 