October 24, 2021 at 1:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Meadow Argus: Meadow Argus III tape
The first side of
this tape consists of eight brief tracks based on a microcassette recording made in 2009. A voice is captured, slowed down, stretched out, and muddied so that it sounds like a hideous ghoul-monster hybrid emerging from a swamp and trying to blurt out whatever message it has to say to the unsuspecting, terrorized human who happens to be witnessing this frightful being. The tape is constantly rewound, producing skidding, screeching noises, and on some of the tracks, the voice isn’t the main focus, so it’s just eerie ambient noises and buzzes looped and transmogrified. A few details that seem inconsequential are constantly returned to, making you feel like you must be missing something and should be focusing harder. It hits on a particularly inspired bit of mania at the end, when the severely disturbed voice says something like “I’ll die on my own”. Second side is called “There Is A Fountain”, and it pairs tape manipulations with shivering, creaky keyboards, with occasional interference bleeding through. Voices faintly appear in brief flashes, and while they aren’t as ghastly as on the first side of the tape, their presence is still disarming.
October 21, 2021 at 5:39 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Jessica Pavone: Lull
Jessica Pavone’s
newest album is the most successful and fascinating of her recent works for string ensembles. She composed and conducted this one for an octet plus soloists, and the players’ improvisations are based on open pitches which they oscillate between on their own will. “Indolent” begins with tones which seem to repeatedly clash for the first several minutes, then it all blends harmoniously after a while, first through more strenuous, locked-in bowing and then blossoming outward to a more expansive gaze of sound. Already by this point, you feel like you’ve gone through a transformative process, but there’s still three more movements left. “Holt” features drummer Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), who patters at the outer edge of a snare drum head, less beating a rhythm than exploring the resonations of the instrument. The string octet creeps in, and Chase accelerates his drumming to a roll, and all of the instruments set off into a merry-go-round-like rotation. Chase’s amplified cymbal swallows the strings before you even realize he’s playing it, and it all strips down from a levitating blur to slow, sparse movements. Nate Wooley ends the piece with some visceral, spluttery trumpet playing, and he remains during the next piece, “Ingot”, focusing on a single droning note as the strings shift and rise behind him. Wooley eventually takes on a rougher, harsher timbre while the strings thresh away, almost approaching a marching tempo. “Midmost” starts out with some deep, almost grunting string clusters, then the playing dissipates and becomes nebulous. For the final half, the musicians all play together in evenly spaced intervals, with subtle alterations to the rhythm. By the end, it feels like gradually easing yourself into a hot bath until all your apprehensions have melted away and you feel soothed.
October 20, 2021 at 7:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Morricone Youth: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog LP
from prolific film/soundtrack buffs Morricone Youth is their score for a 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent film about the hunt for a serial killer in London. The group premiered their score on a Halloween screening of the film in 2013, and it was recorded between 2016 and 2020. The band starts the show off with spooky prog-rock similar to Goblin, but they switch to cool yet swinging jazz for “Golden Curls”, then “Fashion Show” has more of a chic French pop sound. The music gets more drawn out and suspenseful with the arrival of the lodger, but “Is the Lodger the Avenger?” is more rousing cafe-punk, with exuberant horns and rich, swelling Wurlitzer. “Waltz” is a trickily timed revisit of the score’s haunting theme. Curiously, the vinyl version rearranges the track listing so that the woozy, detached title piece that begins the digital version actually ends the LP.
October 19, 2021 at 8:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Colloboh: Entity Relation EP
Collins Oboh is a Nigerian-born producer living in Baltimore, and this is his
debut EP. His music is a highly danceable form of IDM, with soft yet pointy modular synth melodies shooting off and emitting bright lights. There’s calming deep house pads setting the mood but the beats are way more heavily detailed than most house. It’s always joyous and energetic, very well composed but also incredibly fun and positive. “Turning&” recycles a familiar Erykah Badu vocal that’s already been sampled to death, but it sounds so fresh you might not recognize it at first. “RPM+” is a feast of bouncy, boinky tones, so gleeful you might overlook how intricate it is. “one2MANY” is a slower, more tropical sway that spills into drum’n’bass, with beats splashing out like a spray of tiny drops. “Reasons” is an Afrofuturist pop song, with heavily roboticized vocals pleading “give me plenty love” over dubby, sometimes frizzy house beats. What an attention-grabber this EP is! Very much looking forward to more from this artist.
October 18, 2021 at 8:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Prolaps: Ultra Cycle Pt. 3: Autumnal Age
of Prolaps’ seasonal series definitely finds the colder weather setting in. There’s still some hypercharged rave energy here but things are more spaced out, and there’s even a few extended doom zones like the largely beatless “Fractured Nexus”. This gives way to the jagged pinprick rave of “Squirm”, which extends into the plonking beats and refracted jungle samples of “Precog Choreographer”. “Walking Delirium” is the type of track that’s restlessly twitchy yet walking in slow motion at the same time, and “Pattern Recognition” is similar but both deeper and sharper. “Junk DNA” is an almost singeli-like jumble of rapid sounds, although it leaves considerably more room for breathing. There’s much more open space during tracks like “Detoxifying Smoke”, although the joyous panic gradually sets back in. “We Sin With Others” is a manic acidcore jam, and the final “Astral Infection” just shreds into oblivion. Stay tuned for the stocking-stuffing fourth part arriving at the dawn of winter.
October 17, 2021 at 1:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Sir Tad: Sir Tad Goes Deeper & Deeper EP
mixes therapeutic samples (instructional tapes, calming bird chirps) with ultra-cheap-fi keyboard sounds, creating a tiny sound-world that’s chipper and pleasant but also feels like it’s crumbling apart and pushing to maintain composure without making it seem like it’s struggling. It would sparkle if it was a cleanly recorded studio effort, but its degraded sound quality sort of redistributes its amount of luster. Plus there’s dubby effects and unexpected sounds like the screeching car tires during “Tie Cord to Racing Car” which add an extra dimension of surrealness. It’s just a small taste, but it’s like a batch of tiny homemade candies with just a few drops of lysergic chemicals inside.
October 16, 2021 at 1:10 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Lovetta Pippen: Picture
Lovetta Pippen sang with His Name Is Alive for several years during the ’90s and 2000s, first appearing as part of a gospel choir featured on
Stars on ESP, and singing lead on albums as recent as 2006’s
Detrola. The first of two HNIA albums sung entirely by her, 2001’s
Someday My Blues Will Cover the Earth, was a diversion into minimalist, melancholy R&B which probably alienated most of the group’s old fans but was the album that got me into the group, and considering the trajectory of alternative R&B since then, it’s fair to say the album was ahead of its time, and would probably have more of a following now if it was released maybe half a decade later and was the debut album by an unknown band. Anyway, Lovetta has very occasionally popped up at concerts or singing backup vocals on records by Michigan folk troubadour Ethan Daniel Davidson, but her voice hasn’t been heard as a lead performer in far too long. She told me she was working on a solo album when I met her ages ago, and at one point she had a MySpace page set up to post her music, but now, at long last, we finally have a
new single from her, popping up out of nowhere on HNIA’s Bandcamp, just like the new ESP Summer releases from last year. “Picture” is a gorgeous soul-jazz tune that leisurely unfolds with brush drums, piano, and bass. Lovetta, whose voice sounds richer and more expressive than ever, sings defiant, steadfast lyrics: “Don’t tell me how to paint my picture, don’t tell me how to sing my blues.” She doesn’t sound bitter, but it’s obvious that it hasn’t been easy for her to get where she is now, and no one recognizes what she’s been through or who she really is. The single also includes a remix by Warren Defever, who retitles the song “They Don’t Know”, which is appropriate as it barely resembles the original, only taking a few traces of the vocals and sprinkling them among shades of keyboards and filtered static, along with some antsy beats which barely touch the ground and don’t seem like they want to stick around too long. Whereas “Picture” is direct and forthright, “They Don’t Know” is detached and lingering, but they’re both different ways of expressing the same message. Just stunning.
October 14, 2021 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Norman W. Long: BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN
Norman W. Long, a member of Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brotherhood and longtime Chicago-area musician, gathers sounds from his environment and transforms them into immersive audio pieces, with the help of semi-modular synths and effects.
This album starts out with a 23-minute live piece, “Southeast”, recorded at Experiental Sound Studio in 2019. It seems to start out simply enough with layers of chirping crickets and chirping birds, but soon the noises are twisted and granulated, with blips and glitches sputtering out, making it harder for your mind’s eye to picture a natural scene, making it appear like an image projected from a malfunctioning DVD player. Eventually it gets doused with sheets of disorienting static which sounds like audio acid rain. After some bells and other samples get shaped into a knocking, percussive rhythm, it all gets swept up and blurred, turning into a bewildering aural storm. “Marsh Filter” is a short piece that takes a seemingly uneventful field recording and manipulates some dripping and humming sounds into a mind-bending flurry, like raindrops somehow shooting in all directions at once. “Reeds” essentially seems like layers of scraping or skating, but there’s something musical about the way the higher pitches tones glimmer in. “Essential/Sacrificial(Worksong)” consists of thick layers of crickets, frogs, and birds, suggesting nature reclaiming the earth, although there’s a faint whirring of passing automobiles in the background. The title alludes to those who had no choice but to work during the pandemic, leaving themselves vulnerable to COVID-19. The lockdown allowed Long to spend much time recording sounds along his local nature trail. “Recovering Landscape Community” is a longer piece which seems to have less human interference than the others, seemingly suggesting tranquility, although there’s traces of a storm rumbling in the distance.
October 13, 2021 at 7:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Saycet: Layers
Pierre Lefeuvre makes ambitious, cinematic electronic music as Saycet, approaching similar emotional territory as Jon Hopkins or Rone. The beats are a bit rough and distorted but not super glitchy, and the tracks build up without blasting into overdrive. He tends to write delicate melodies without making them too saccharine, and likewise the beats are never too challenging, but not simplistic either. It’s very balanced, but not middle of the road. “Lightyear” definitely edges its way towards a tear-filled climax, and the slower “Layers” is like triumphantly ascending to the top of a mountain. Another track is even called “Mountaineers”, and it similarly feels like it’s scaling an epic peak. “Murmuration”, with guest Joseph Schiano Di Lombo, diverts from club-influenced tracks for a stirring neo-classical piano reflection. After hearing a few tracks, it’s not hard to tell where the rest of them are going to go once they start, but his music is good for momentary rushes of feverish drama.
October 10, 2021 at 1:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Negativland: No Brain EP
Negativland’s new EP is a short overflow of ideas from their interconnected last 2 albums,
True False and
The World Will Decide. The record starts with “Megaphone Guy”, a piece about the loudest guy in the room, the one that is unavoidable and has no shortage of opinions to subject people to. Essentially it discusses how social media has given us all the power to become the filterless idiot with a megaphone. Then the brief “Mister Nobody” is about the invisible criminals who monitor everyone. “No Brain” is about how little of the information that comes across your vision even registers with your brain, and even how little of the internet you see from search results, or how different search results are available for different classes. “Sequitur” is riddled with purposeful non-sequiturs, demonstrating how it’s nearly impossible for most people to tell what’s relevant and true among the constant stream of information that we’re constantly being bombarded with all the time. The EP is a short, focused burst of pointed, meaningful content which holds up a mirror to the continual process of content-making. Online pre-orders of the EP included
Aux Brain, an album of live performances culled from their 2019 European tour. Reconstructing pieces in real time, the performances often take on more of an ambient quality than the album versions, with familiar samples bursting out of the ether, and less of a rhythmic base than the carefully sculpted recordings.
Escape From Noise favorite “Time Zones” sounds extra ominous and detached, although I’m not really getting if they’ve updated it much. Then the Weatherman does a live demonstration of what happens when he asks Google, Alexa and Siri about why he’s attracted to the odor of cheap melting plastic, or if it’s ok for him to shake his pants when he takes them off. The computer voices just laugh at him and talk about scorpions, and because of their uselessness, the Weatherman has no choice but to make a horribly off-key attempt at singing. A blast of
Escape/
Helter Stupid-era soundbytes round out the piece, as the irrepressible Weatherman can’t help but laughing everything off.
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