May 14, 2021 at 8:34 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Giant Claw: Mirror Guide
The follow-up to Giant Claw’s incredible
Soft Channel is just as surreal yet less random, and more harmonic, more human, warmer. Far away from the juke rhythms and R&B samples of past work,
Mirror Guide focuses on cello parts which wriggle, stutter, and clash melodically. On “Disworld”, the cellos dance around NTsKi’s vocals and gradually pile up and divebomb, and they crackle and splatter beside Tamar Kamin’s choral chants during “Until Mirror”. “Mirror Guide” is a two-part journey which seems to be gradually drilling away at a level of consciousness to get to a more enlightened state. It nearly breaks through after the first big push, and from there reality seems refracted and unknowable. Yet NTsKi’s vocals, while fragmented, seem confident and assuring, suggesting a duality (“You. And. Me… And. Me.”) as the music grows calming and cocoonlike. “Thousand Whys” is the album’s most forceful piece, with catapulting vocals, sorrowful strings, and electronic manipulations that straight up
thwack at some points. This album may or may not be more approachable to listeners who thought
Soft Channel was too dry. It’s just as challenging, and just as rewarding if you make the effort to get into it.
May 13, 2021 at 7:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Glüme: The Internet
One of IDIB’s latest signees is an aspiring actress and musician who found Chromatics on Spotify and knew she had to have Johnny Jewel producer her music. She submitted a demo and heard back within minutes. She was diagnosed with a rare heart disease and basically is confined to living out her life online, especially once the pandemic hit. So her music is her escape, her fantasy, and her window to the world. Her album has the signature IDIB cinematic ’80s nocturnal vibes, but there’s an extra poignant touch to it. 3 features the chorus “baby it’s not so bad, it’s just a nervous breakdown” over a chugging synthwave beat, alluding to her physical and mental state. Other songs are pure fantasy (“Crushed Velvet”) and Americana (the Lana Del Rey-ish opener “Arthur Miller”). “Body” mixes delicate, sensual synths and vocals with the crunch of industrial techno. The hazy ballad “Blossom” expresses desires to get married, start a family, and have it all. “Don’t @ Me” and “The Internet” celebrate the act of building up a persona and starting shit online to stave off the void. As the album drifts to an end, she says “these chemicals in my mind, I wish I could convince them to play nice”.
May 12, 2021 at 10:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Colin Cannon: McGolrick
Brooklyn composer Colin Cannon’s new album, named after a park in Brooklyn, is a pretty confounding suite that leaps between genres, and is threaded together by numerous phone messages, making it feel extremely personal although it’s not quite clear what all of the voices and musical references mean to him. Opening piece “Get Up” starts out orchestral avant-prog, then gets submerged in a deeply psychedelic haze four minutes in; it really takes your head to a different space when his vocals hit. “Can’t Get the Time” is even proggier, and is filled with choral harmonies as well as flashes of distant shouts. “Radio” picks up some scrambled transmissions, riding a current from a repeating bit about Jesus, then rapidly switching to bits of gospel, Dixieland, prog-rock, and vaportrap, then gradually swelling up with strings before the full band bursts through. “Electric” segues right into “Sunshine”, in which a vintage recording of “You Are My Sunshine” becomes surrounded by a colorful arrangement of the song which gradually gets crazier, and at one point it sounds like a skewed bit of “Over the Rainbow” sneaks in, while “You Are My Sunshine” sinks to the bottom. The three-part “The Scraps” starts out gentle and acoustic, but by the end, it swells into a symphony of police sirens, honking car alarms, and shouting kids. The kids are given their own brief track, and then their voices are incorporated once again into the knotty, lengthy “McGolrick”, which veers from tender to manic, but lands with a big finish.
May 12, 2021 at 10:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ki Oni: Indoor Plant Life
Ambient music for plants is essentially a full-fledged genre now, encompassing not only rediscovered classics by Mort Garson and Hiroshi Yoshimura, but newer works by Green-House and Loris S. Sarid. Ki Oni’s
Indoor Plant Life is another addition to this particular canon, and its two 15-minute pieces both glow and glisten, gently floating in the breeze of an open window. The first one seems like it’s taking place during a sunny afternoon, while the second is more nocturnal, but there might actually be more going on while the sun is gone and everyone’s asleep.
Ki Oni: Stay Indoors and Swim
is even better, this time with 8 tracks to get immersed in, and yes, they feel more liquid. Very wavy and washed out, but also artificial, more like the pool at a hotel than a beach. The notes ramble and lap over each other, and sometimes they become a bit clearer the deeper you listen. “The Island Time Forgot” is filled with strange tape manipulations and gets particularly fun and trippy, and other pairs of tracks are basically just variations on the same currents, like different observations of the same tank. Perfect to get hypnotized staring at aquariums to, and then have dreams about it.
May 11, 2021 at 5:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Tristan Kasten-Krause: Potential Landscapes
Composer Tristan Kasten-Krause recommends listening to these four drone pieces “at an immersive volume”. If my apartment walls weren’t so thin I would be cranking this up super loud, but even at a reasonable volume, there’s a lot going on that could be easy to miss if you’re just treating it as background audio. “Dawn Looming” stretches out so far over the horizon that you can almost see it physically vibrating, and it manages to fold itself into a compact space by sundown. “Euphoria Cancel” both levitates with Carol N Johnson’s violin playing and pummels with Jayson Gerycz’s rumbling percussion. Somehow it all builds up to a single “klong”, and then it all goes silent, as if it never happened. “From Thin Air” is mostly a showcase for Lisel’s cascading vocals, with backing by the composer’s double bass. Finally, “Contra” is a 15-minute bass drone which gradually balloons, then hits a more fragile section just as it seems like it’s gotten almost larger than life. It feels like Kasten-Krause is persisting and stretching as far as he can to get to the end, yet, it still sounds like an abrupt fade-out, so maybe he was able to go further.
May 10, 2021 at 8:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Danny Goliger: Meaningful Pursuits
Producer and engineer Danny Goliger’s
first album doesn’t come with a whole lot of background info or contextual material, so there’s not much indication of what to expect when you press play. It starts off with some lush but complex d’n’b, then other tracks explore the funky yet playful (“Calculable”) and wistfully melodic (“Meaningful Pursuits”) sides of IDM. “Reality Now” is potentially a satire of extreme pandemic paranoia, with a robotic voice croaking things like “do not go outside, do not look out the window, do not look at your phone”. “Power Dry” does the levitating synth melodies and crisp drum breaks thing really well, then the drums go all choppy and slippery during the breakdown. “Moth” is sort of future garage with muscular drums, then “Court Card” has more carefully maneuvered beats and cresting pads, as well as a wailing synth lead. “B-” is a woozy ambient comedown, then the Benny Bridges-co-produced “Survivors Guilt” is a reflective glitch-pop tune with vocodered lyrics that are hard to make out, but lines like “changes set us free” and “you’ve got to wait” stand out.
May 9, 2021 at 11:44 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Deborah Martin & Jill Haley: The Silence of Grace
The first collaboration between Spotted Peccary regular Deborah Martin and Jill Haley (One Alternative, longtime William Ackerman collaborator) is super pastoral new age that perfectly matches the paintings of waterfalls, mountains, forests, and caves that make up the album’s artwork. Haley’s oboe and English horn gently roll across the fields of lush synths, and it generally feels light, warm, and uplifting. “Indian Heaven” has softly pounding drums and shakers, but it’s largely free-floating and beatless. “Verdant Sanctuary” has some gorgeous sparkling melodies, and “From Fire Into Water” has didgeridoo-types droning rhythms in its first half, although the instrument isn’t credited so I think it might be electronically generated. “Water Flows of Clouds and Thunder” similarly has synths that imitate harp-like tones, and it sounds exactly like its title, even ending with a brief burst of thunder. Thoroughly soothing and imaginative work.
May 3, 2021 at 8:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Cadence Weapon: Parallel World
Rollie Pemberton’s
newest album is his most politically charged release, immediately proclaiming “Black is back” and addressing gentrification and the government’s failure to recognize Black people. “Skyline” sums up the dystopian reality of these issues in 2 minutes. As ever, the noted journalist, former Poet Laureate of Edmonton, and soon-to-be memoir author’s lyrics are sharp and literate, but they’re on another level from the college-age club stories of his early albums, tackling big issues while also displaying a renewed sense of confidence. The surveillance-preoccupied “On Me” continues Pemberton’s from-the-beginning fascination with U.K. grime, featuring a guest verse by Manga Saint Hilare and production by Strict Face. “Play No Games” is closer to the purple sound from the late ’00s, with very busy, wobbly production backing pointed lyrics (“my prime minister wears blackface but he don’t really wanna face Blacks”). “SENNA” (with frequent collaborator Jacques Greene) is much closer to drill, complete with ad-libs, but with more of a euphoric rave atmosphere. Jimmy Edgar’s production on “WATER” (ft. Fat Tony) is brittle and tense, and “Eye to Eye” is less claustrophobic but still blood-chilling. Polaris winner Backxwash provides a cathartic guest verse on “Ghost”. “Connect” is a bit more dreamy and IDM-y, and closer to the more inward-looking and melodic material he’s made before. For the most part, though, this isn’t an album of hype club jams or introspection, and it’s nothing like the hipster nostalgia of his track on the last Jacques Greene album — it’s easily the most urgent Cadence Weapon record.
May 3, 2021 at 6:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Amiture: The Beach
Amiture’s debut album is a highly focused slab of minimal darkwave pop, filled with gloomy lyrics about lying and regret, and steadily throbbing beats and sequencers. The most unique addition is the pedal steel and fiddle which appear on several tracks, but they’re subtle enough that they don’t register as those instruments, you might just assume they’re synths. I guess you could draw parallels between goth rock and Southern gothic, but that doesn’t really fit here. Regardless, it’s fine stuff with sullen vocals, propulsive beats, and dark clouds of melodic synths. While the album is steadfast in its gloominess, “Slide In” seems at least a little playful, with lines like “I need a bagpipe so I can blow up every night”. “Operator” nails a shivery vibe pretty well, and then “Dream” is more haunting techno than darkwave. “Last Exit” is a blurry ambient daze, and then “Let’s Talk” is one of the most confident, yet most heartbroken pop songs here.
May 2, 2021 at 4:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Hal Galper Quintet: Live at the Berlin Philharmonic ’77
Alright, so here’s a previously unreleased live set performed by a bunch of artists I should probably be more familiar with. This concert was recorded after Galper had just finished a tour with Cannonball Adderley, and he’s joined by Randy and Mike Brecker, Wayne Dockery, and Bob Moses. All six songs are around 10-25 minutes each, and all five musicians simply go off. Opener “Now Hear This” is just nonstop energy for 14 minutes. “Speak with a Single Voice” (the title track to the LP released by the quintet in 1979) is almost twice as long, and while there’s a few moments that seem like pauses for solos, there’s no loss in energy, it’s just configured a bit differently. Galper’s piano playing sounds particularly rabid and multi-limbed here, not to mention Moses’ drumming or Dockery’s intricate bass wrangling. The rendition of “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” isn’t full band, only sax and piano, but both Galper and Mike Brecker push hard into the outer limits, far beyond the gentle love song it seems like at the beginning. And “This Is the Thing” is the most madcap of them all, too much energy for words. The only drawback is the album’s fluctuating audio quality. It clearly sounds pieced together from different sources, and both “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” and “Hey Fool” are particularly patchy, shifting from full-bodied sound to worn-out cassette bootleg (or tinny, watery mp3) without warning. The music itself is stellar, however, and for most of the album, it’s easy to overlook the less-than-ideal fidelity.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 