February 24, 2013 at 4:12 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Saturday Looks Good To Me: Sunglasses
4 years after SLGTM ended and Fred Thomas started focusing on City Center, the band has resurfaced with a new lineup (of course) and new songs, with plans to release an album this year. Life Like released a tour tape last year, which was excellent and full of promise for the new album. Before the end of the year, 2 7″s were also released, giving us a clearer taste of the band’s new sound. “Sunglasses” is their latest earworm, and the album’s first single. While it still has their classic pop sound, it’s a little bit alarming to hear modern, almost crunk-sounding drum machine beats come in when the vocals first hit, and again towards the end. The rest of the song has their usual full pop-band sound, with baritone sax by Dan Bennett (also of NOMO), some surfy guitar, and lyrics about wanting to have a good time in spite of life’s pressures and frustrations. Fred’s been saying that the new album is musically more subtle and intricate than their older stuff, and this is an intriguing taste of that. Also, the vocals are by new singer Carol Catherine, who fits in with the band’s sound, although I do have to say that my favorite SLGTM songs tended to be the ones with Erika Hoffman singing, mostly because her voice just sounded so awesome and I really miss Godzuki and the songs she did with His Name Is Alive. So we’ll see how Carol continues the band’s legacy. The B-side is a minute-long duet by Fred and Amber, singing slightly creepy lyrics over nervous, warbling organ.
Saturday Looks Good To Me/Traffic Light: split 7″
The other new SLGTM single is a split 7″ on Japanese label Violet and Claire. The song’s called “Ride To The Party”, and it also appeared on their tour tape last year. It’s a little bit similar to one of their other new songs, “Invisible Friend”, which was also on that tape, although I think this song’s maybe a little lass catchy. But it’s still a breezy, sunny pop song, with an insistent drumbeat and some cool synth sounds towards the end. Not as intricate as “Sunglasses”, and maybe it goes down a little easier too. The B-side is by Japanese band Traffic Light, who do a decent take on straightforward power-pop.
February 24, 2013 at 3:40 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Samantha Glass: Rising Movements
2 new releases from Beau Devereaux’s excellent Samantha Glass project. The tape on Constellation Tatsu sort of reminds me of a more kosmische version of Black Moth Super Rainbow, combining their sort of hazy, playfully evil take on psychedelia with more Cluster-like textures. The first movement is the most upbeat and poppy, with the others being a bit more contemplative. The fourth movement has some crunchy bass guitar riffs anchoring a serene synth/drum machine journey, and the 9-minute final movement has quickly ticking drum machine beats, bright synths, and cloudy vocals. A really interesting balance between poppy psychedelic elements and more cosmic, exploratory synth-based ones.
Samantha Glass: Mysteries From The Palomino Skyliner
The LP on Not Not Fun is his first vinyl release, and it actually sounds more hazy and lo-fi than the tape. Even the packaging is really DIY, it doesn’t come in a full sleeve, just a silk-screened fold-over cover with a photocopied insert featuring a melting skeleton face, a cosmic triangle, an eye in the sky, and a message from the palomino skyliner telling you to imagine and explore a world within in order to experience a gripping ride home. Musically, it’s definitely a lot closer to the psychedelic rock side than the cosmic Krautrock side, although it still has thin drum machine beats, which tend to be more slow, trippy groove-based patterns than fast skittery ones. “Seasonal Seduction 1” uses dub chords to add an extra layer of trippiness. The second site has another multi-movement suite, “Return To The Sky”, although like
Rising Movements, it also works well as individual pieces. Overall, if I had to chose between the two, I’d say I might prefer the tape to the LP, it seems like more of a unified statement and I think I like its particular style a little bit more, but they’re both great, unique takes on lo-fi electronic psychedelic rock.
February 24, 2013 at 2:43 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Seabat: Crescent ParC
First vinyl release on Constellation Tatsu, and it is astonishing. Seriously gorgeous outerspace planetarium music to ponder the cosmos to. Last.fm describes a seabat as something that would shoot up out of the water, harassing sailors, shooting hypnotizing beams of light from its eyes, and making siren-like sounds that would drive sailors insane and cause them to dive into the ocean. While I wouldn’t describe this music as deadly or menacing as that description, it definitely is otherworldly. Lots of arpeggiating rhythms and swooping synths, some playfully mangled vocal samples and just a general sense of curious strangeness. Lots of swooping and gliding involved, and the artwork definitely fits, as it feels very sunny and beach-like, yet staring towards the open sky. Last track is a two-parter called “South Asian Real Estate” which gets kind of sinister with chant-like sounds, and ends the album on a dark vibe, but not really a depressing one.
February 24, 2013 at 2:22 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
En/Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: split tape
I’m going to be reviewing a lot of Constellation Tatsu releases because they send me download promos of everything they release and I have a lot of them stored up and they’re all really good. This one’s a split between two artists who released albums I really liked, En’s album being
Already Gone on Students Of Decay, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s being the unbelievably great
Love Is A Stream on Type in 2010. On this tape, En take up an entire side of the tape with a nearly half-hour composition called “Blood”. It’s a slowly evolving work, beginning quietly, and slowly fading in soft static along with ethereal guitar. Some beautiful chiming digital tones occur, and the piece shifts to swelling string drones. Eventually a gently throbbing bass pulse emerges, not really guiding a rhythm but just sort of gently bobbing along with the harmonium-sounding drone and a few washes of guitar or synth (can’t really tell which). The second side is Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s “Blood Variations”, and if En’s “Blood” is like blood softly running through a body and keeping it alive, Jefre’s interpretation is closer to bloody violence. The first variation is a minute and a half long and takes En’s drones and mixes in waves of hissing static, but the second variation is 18 minutes, and starts out like a darker, minimal variation on the first half of En’s “Blood”, but for the last 5 minutes adds the type of searing yet stunningly gorgeous noise that Jefre is so skilled at. Not quite as scorched-earth as
Love Is A Stream, but it works in waves of brittle static and distortion to the crystalline tones of En’s piece, not smothering them in distortion but enhancing them.
February 23, 2013 at 1:28 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Moira Scar: Scarred For Life
Skronky, art-damaged freak-rock from a band that sounds like they wear weird costumes on stage, even before you look at the drawing of them doing so in the liner notes, or look up pictures of them online. Brings to mind a darker, more death-rock version of a quirky ’90s indie rock group along the lines of Thinking Fellers (but maybe not quite as out there as Caroliner, speaking of costume bands). Plenty of sax, spooky organ and synth/organ, and howling vocals. The instrumentation and musicianship is kind of sloppy, especially on the more out-there jammy tracks (lookin’ at you, track 3), but the more straightforward songs (such as “Space Time Resonators”) shred pretty hard. The title track is 6-minute epic with quasi-operatic vocals, which breaks into a melodic indie-pop gem for a minute or so (indie-popera?). “Telepathos” sort of sounds like Le Tigre’s younger goth cousin; riot grrrl new-wave alternating between girly and operatic vocals. “Transblister” is another lazer-assisted garage-punk tune with wailing, dramatic vocals. The album ends with “Tarantula Tangoid”, a dark and circus-freaky instrumental with dueling organs and horns. Definitely at home on the same label as Fat Worm Of Error and Ritualistic School Of Errors.
February 18, 2013 at 10:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Charity Blackstock: 3″ cdr
Fedora Corpse usually releases vinyl (and MP3s), and all of their vinyl releases are high quality. It looks like they put out a few very limited 3″ CDR releases late last year, though, and this is one of them, limited to 12 copies and probably not available anymore. 4 tracks of crushing noise feedback, packaged in some sort of wallpaper-like golden-stamped paisley pattern. “Tatami” starts and definitely has some sort of subliminal voice action going on in the background. It vibrates with enough intensity to suggest some sort of beat or rhythm, sort of. “Train” could sort of suggest a train-like rhythm, but sped up and extremely amplified with metallic distortion. It arrives at a very blissed-out sound, and I wish it went longer than just 4 minutes, as it fades out kind of abruptly. “Teapot” isn’t quite as noisy as the others, focusing on a buzzing, dark drone which continually sways for its 4-minute duration. “Tripod” returns to the noise, pounding its way through a storm of feedback for 6 minutes. It seems to generally stay in the same place, just oscillating with varying degrees of intensity, and with some pounding pulsations, a bit more randomly at first but forming a frequent rhythm during the last couple minutes. Seriously intense, but not impenetrably harsh noise. Very nicely done.
February 18, 2013 at 9:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Mueran Humanos: El Circulo/La Langosta
Hypnotic, repetitive industrial?psych? with Spanish lyrics. “El Circulo” has a minimal, delay-heavy drum machine beat, blinking synths, and slightly distorted vocals. Vocals and guitars and beat get a bit more furious and distorted at times, but it mostly stays in the same straightforward mode. “La Langosta” is slower, quieter, softer, and not furious at all. It has another minimal, thumpy beat, but languid keyboards and cricket-like sounds throughout the song. The vocals are calm and chantlike, but they’re only present for a few minutes, and the rest of the track goes on a long mostly-instrumental journey of chirping, bubbling, droning synths and guitars. There’s almost sort of an Eastern tinge to some of the guitars, and some more upfront blissful organ droning in the latter half of the song. Some more vocals come in, as well as a little undercurrent of feedback, but it mostly sticks to the same chilled out repetitive vibe, and the same thumpy minimal beat, but with some occasional delay and noise effects flaring up.
February 18, 2013 at 9:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Brünch: 7″ EP
Seriously lovely instrumental space-rock from the always wonderful Fedora Corpse label out of Philadelphia. This 7″ is 4 tracks of instrumental downtempo rock, most likely made by one lonely guy with a guitar and a drum machine. Just a spare, uncomplicated beat clicking away and some dusty guitar work. All tracks 2 or 3 minutes long, and you feel like they could go on a lot longer in an album format, but they sound fine as succinct ideas this way. I guess it sort of reminds me of Mogwai or Jesu, but in a much more lo-fi, singular vision or idea. “Piedmont” has a touch of whammy-bar note-bending. “Anchored” is a little more sparse and maybe has some organ. Good stuff all around.
February 17, 2013 at 4:34 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Mendel Kaelen: The Tragedy That Drowned Itself
An old, dusty harmonium is the only proper musical instrument heard here, but instead of sounding like you’d expect a harmonium drone album to sound like, the recordings present focus on the mechanical aspects of the instrument. As in, creaking and wheezing sounds that you might not expect to come from the instrument, or might tune out if you were playing it or trying to record it. It sounds like a field recording type album, you swear you hear gusts of wind or rain, or maybe sounds you might expect to hear on a ship or boat. Along with all the pumping and scraping, there’s still plenty of minimal, somewhat melodic droning. The album’s centerpiece, a 20 minute piece called “The Horse”, has the harmonium loud and upfront, but accompanied by all sorts of gnarly gnashing and crackling sounds. “The Heart” starts out with windy, static-y sounds and ends up focusing on a thick bass drone sound. “The Dream” ends the album, probably with the most clear and blissful drone sound on the album, but still with some birdlike squeals and watery ripples.
February 17, 2013 at 1:49 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Korperschwache: As the color fades from the dying petals
Korperschwache is a long-running doom-metal-noise project, with dozens of releases stretching back to the late ’90s. I’m most familiar with the project’s releases on Inam Records (always a quality label), but they also have plenty of releases on Crucial Blast/Crucial Bliss, Peasant Magik, Public Guilt, and many others. This is a fantastic CDr containing three long tracks with long titles, and utilizing slow, Godflesh-y drum machine beats, electrified drones utilizing keyboards and guitars and what sounds like a harmonium (maybe it isn’t but it sounds close), and some occasional Gregorian chant-like vocals. An 11-minute prelude sets the tone with the slow beats and droning, and then we get into the 38 minute monster titled “On my last night in the moonlight I remember how the dead flowers looked inside your shallow grave”. This starts out with harmonium-sounding drone, Gregorian chanting, and then some slow reedy vocals, before the slow doom-metal guitars and drum machine beats kick in. The vocals shift to something more black metal-ish, simultaneously sounding like they’re whispering and screeching, and of course covered in echo. After this, the piece continues in a long instrumental section, using more of the harmonium-like drone, focusing on guitar and drums for a bit, and then removing the beats entirely, and dropping out to a more atmospheric guitar sound. The long beatless section gets lighter, adding soft keyboards and even electric piano, and then more harmonium-drone. A bit of drumming comes back in, but the piece begins to fade out after the half-hour mark… only to return to the reedy vocals, which are abruptly cut in by abrasive shrieking, and then a faster, more involved drum machine pattern. The vocals are turned down a little, but they’re still loud and abrasive. After a few minutes, the drums and vocals go away, and the guitars sort of burn out, and there’s a quiet bit of drums and vocals, which sound particularly evil and ogre-like. The album’s coda is almost 9 minutes long, short for this album but still epic by other standards. It ties everything together with more crushing drum machine beats, droning and guitars. Some really lovely sounds here, and even as doomy as it is, it’s extraordinarily beautiful and even uplifting.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 