December 3, 2023 at 1:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Meadow Argus: The Chameleon’s Dish tape
layers vocals from some sort of meditation tape over vibrating industrial drone. On side A, “Color Wheel”. a calm, evenly paced voice directs you to different colors and shapes, and constantly asks how these things make you feel. Later on, he starts talking at a quicker pace and directs you to focus on a plant. I’ll be honest, I’m way more interested in focusing on the drone loops rather than the narrator. The loops are hypnotic but not smoothed out and relaxing, there’s distant squeals and shrieks which become more audible near the end. “Air to the Rock”, side B, has the same voice, talking about staring up at fluffy clouds. The music seems appropriate for skygazing but it’s still a bit abrasive, noisy, acidic, and clangy. There’s a well-timed moment of deep-inner-space trippiness before the narrator starts talking about seeing the auras of people around you. I kind of drifted out after that but I guess that’s appropriate.
December 2, 2023 at 6:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Eki Shola: 還 (Kaeru)
Eki Shola’s
fifth album is her most collaborative release, and easily her most fully realized so far. She recorded it in Japan with Uma Ebina (shamisen and shakuhachi), Tatsuya Okabayashi (Mongolian Morin Khuur), and drummer Hidenori Tsugita, and the unique instrumentation and group dynamics add an expanded depth to her songs. She first visited Japan 20 years ago as a medical student, and this album is a sort of homecoming, physically and spiritually. “For You” has a gently grooving beat and swirling keyboards, but the stringed instruments are the stars. “Kaeru” is more of an introspective funk jam about finding one’s home. The tense, reality-questioning “What Is” is followed by the more relaxed, reverie-like “Falling”. “Forest” has both dub effects and spiritual new age vibes. “Unity” is a conscious semi-rap about having hope for humanity, and “Not Afraid to Hope” turns the lyrical focus inward. Finally, “Starry” offers words of encouragement, most notably “Do it for yourself”. The whole album has a comfortable, spontaneous flow to it. These aren’t pop songs, but moments of inspiration, reflection, and camaraderie, with rhythms and hopeful lyrics that unfold at a natural pace.
October 29, 2023 at 1:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Off World: 3
The
final album of a trilogy from Sandro Perri’s experimental side project is another captivating set that eludes easy categorization, fluidly combining acoustic and electronic sounds into post-minimalist rhythmic and tonal explorations. After the wondrous string-based intro piece “Orientation”, “Impulse Controller” is a lengthy expedition through a textural rainforest, with cool, mellotron-like synths and a snaking rhythm with a sort of treated bounce to it, along with sporadic trumpet cries. “Terrascope” is a minute-long noise interlude featuring a Buchla Music Easel. “Ludic Loop” is a gorgeous slow processional with a wafting Juno synth line and guitar that cries out to the sun. Easily the album’s standout for me, just something lovely to bask in. “Empasse” has a similar back-and-forth movement, with Perri playing a Prophet 5, but he’s joined again by violinist Jesse Zubot, and while it doesn’t exactly feel harsh, it feels less comforting than the previous piece.
October 21, 2023 at 5:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Kate Gentile: Find Letter X
Drummer and composer Kate Gentile’s
newest opus contains three CDs, each over an hour long, and each is a dense, complex world of its own interconnected with the wider universe of the other discs. The other players are saxophonist/clarinettist Jeremy Viner, synth and keyboard player Matt Mitchell, and bassist Kim Cass. The electronic parts get a lot of short, sizzling, piercing interludes to themselves, like the very first track of the first disc. “Laugh Magic” is dense mathcore jazz that constantly switches time signatures, and already at this point in the album, all bets are off, there’s no telling what’s in store. The band navigate through corkscrew rhythms and more straightforward parts, sometimes overlapping or criss-crossing, and to me it all sounds perfectly composed and arranged and executed, not random or intentionally difficult. It’s hard to even pick out standout moments, because it really does feel like the whole album is meant to be taken as a singular journey. The press release says the album was inspired by the third season of Twin Peaks, and how it has an extremely complex story line and abstract logic of its own, and even though there isn’t a narrative connecting the pieces on this album, it’s similar in how it just completely subverts expectations and goes in its own directions and doesn’t wait for you to catch up with it. Some parts do deserve mention though, like the manic prog-metal-jazz of disc 2 opener “R.A.T.B.O.T.B”. Really the whole second disc keeps up that intensity, with tracks like “Garbage Juice” adding more synth chaos. “Importunate Babble” piles all the elements up into one of the album’s most intense, overwhelming compositions. Disc 3 opens with the 10-minute monster “Psychoradiant”, and cools down somewhat for a few moments, with a bit more emphasis on piano, but still with fast, rapidly evolving rhythms. “Spectrescope” seems to start with mellower tones and a more spacious approach but it gets worked up and knotty by the end. Then “Quantum Exits” is a 13 minute tour de force, but the much shorter “Epitome” which follows is a more concentrated burst of energy and color. Crazily enough, this isn’t even the most massive thing Gentile and Mitchell have created — they released a 6 CD set titled
Snark Horse two years ago. After listening to
Find Letter X a few times, I think I’m almost ready for that one.
October 15, 2023 at 11:58 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Conflict at Serenity Pools: Ladders of Misfortune
Conflict at Serenity Pools’ already robust self-released discography has generally dipped into psychedelic indie electronic and ambient house waters, but
their newest album has the most straightforward alternative pop songs they’ve written so far. Simple, hooky indie pop with hushed vocals and some reverb effects but nothing really approaching the realm of shoegaze. “Jasmine” is a bit longer (almost 5 minutes) and has a sort of motorik rhythm, but it’s still poppy. “Saying Goodbye” is short, wistful, and folky, and a delay-heavy a cappella cover of “Nature Boy” provides the album’s most haunting moment.
October 14, 2023 at 2:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Patrick Elkins: Fruits of the Spirit
Ypsilanti weirdo folk legend Patrick Elkins released
this album on We’re Twins Records in 2006, right before the label shut down. It was the label’s only professionally pressed CD rather than a CD-R, and 500 copies were pressed, but most of them just sat in a closet for years. Label founder Jason Voss has now started a new label,
Editions JAV, and is returning the remaining copies to circulation. Recorded and produced by Fred Thomas, it’s closer to noisy garage-pop than folk, with lots of distorted guitars, dubby effects, melodica, drum machines, and a general electrified atmosphere. The songs are usually short and fragmentary, though “Tornado Belt” is a more dramatic string-laden ballad, and “Fruit of the Spirits” is sort of entranced drone-folk with plenty of moaning and warped effects. “Fallout” is 38 seconds of throat-shredding punk screaming, but not at punk tempo. “I’ll Be Your Celibate Monk” is one of the weirder, more unpredictable moments, and “Fever on the Inside” is a drum-heavy caveman rock pounder that sounds as unhinged as anything on
1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts. Finally, “Suicide Muffins” is a grand entry into the canon of upbeat songs with dark, even morbid lyrics, but it’s tossed off gleefully in about a minute.
October 8, 2023 at 6:09 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Celestaphone: Paper Cut From the Obit
Celestaphone’s music stretches past the boundaries of hip-hop, to the point where
his latest basically ends up feeling like a prog-rock album with a heavy jazz-funk influence. Playful pianos, elastic grooves, and morphing, thought bubble-like keyboard blips detail the vivid sound beds for terminally online word salad. The tracks often flow into each other, creating surprising beat switches and genre dovetails, like the BBQ/pool party-ready funk near-instrumental “Day”, while some of the lyrics (including a Mac Dre reference early on) and Celestaphone’s flows clearly mark out his lineage in the pantheon of West Coast hip-hop. Still, the music is gleeful jazz-prog and even post-punk rather than G-funk. The knotty synth-funk instrumental “Nay” dissolves into the woozy scientific terror-dream “Paintings of Panspermia”, and tucked away near the end of the album is one of the hardest Moor Mother verses I’ve ever heard (on a track with Armand Hammer, no less), and an entire song where Paul Barman bursts with joy about how much he loves babies. A really surprising and fun LP where sarcasm bleeds into celebration as we’re taken on a ride down a twisting, non-obvious path.
October 1, 2023 at 3:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Martes martes: Dragon cat fox cat scn (Expanded Edition)
Martes martes was a solo project of former WCBN DJ Jeffrey Nolan Carey during the 2000s.
This CD contains an album he released on Jib Kidder’s short-lived Capt Bass label, plus an EP on another long-gone imprint, Burning Tongue Records. Carey plays a lot of delicate acoustic instruments, and even toys, including harp, dulcimer, recorders, French horn, and more, as well as samples and Mario Paint. It’s very delicate and homemade, not unlike Frank Pahl’s music and films, or the fragmentary folk of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. There’s also a significant new age influence here, but the earlier private press weirdo kind, not the commercialized health food store and spa kind. It’s all playful and curious, and “miniature” enough to appeal to fans of strange experimental indie stuff, yet it feels too well-crafted to tag it as “lo-fi”. Drum machines, clapping, piping woodwinds, and sophisticated guitar plucking collide on the gleeful march “Pine Marten Traveling Song”. Other songs make nice music for playing in the forest during autumn. “A Ydych Chi Wedi Gweld Bele’r Coed Yn Eryn” takes things in a different direction, with mbira melodies and eerie whirring. “Martens at Night” is a lovely string-heavy piece, and the string quartet version of “Autumn Walking Song” (track 14) is also in this vein. “Foggy Morning” starts bleary and then wakes up with a barrage of ringing alarm samples. Curiously, the CD ends with hissing and beating sounds of a lung machine.
September 30, 2023 at 3:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Setting: Shone a Rainbow Light
Jaime Fennelly’s Mind Over Mirrors project increasingly went in a cosmic Americana direction with its last few albums, and here the harmonium/synth master teams up with Black Twig Pickers’ Nathan Bowles and drummer Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone, many other projects).
Setting’s debut album starts with “We Center”, a magnificently zoned-out piece more on the Krautrock/raga end of things. Then “Zoetropics” mixes harmonium drifting with choppy rhythms and banjo, making me think of Penguin Cafe but also going somewhere they wouldn’t dare. “A Sun Harp” is more of an Alice Coltrane-esque spiritual jazz excursion, with hypnotic zither and piano working splendidly against rapidly tumbling drums and washes of synths and strings. “Fog Glossaries” is a much more melancholy, rolling procession with tolling bells and eventually drums that sound like a train rumbling by. All four tracks are very different, and they’re all pretty fantastic, so it seems like this project could go in any number of directions from here.
September 23, 2023 at 3:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment
v/a: Zum Audio Vol. 5
George Chen’s Zum label has been in operation since 1997, and the earliest volumes of their Zum Audio compilation series included appearances by bands like Modest Mouse and Duster. Then in 2006, the third volume documented the flourishing noise/noise-rock scene with artists like Can’t, John Wiese, and Yellow Swans. A digital-only fourth volume appeared in 2021, and now the fifth marks the series’ return to the CD format, perfect for college radio DJs who like to take chances on weird underground music. The first disc starts out with some riveting noise-techno from Hausu Mountain/Deathbomb Arc alumni Davey Harms, fka Mincemeat or Tenspeed. Spring Breeding follows, immediately sounding like they would’ve been a perfect fit on Troubleman Unlimited or Load Records two decades ago, switching between noisy grindcore and scraggly dance-punk. A steadily paced, cathartic doom metal song by KIM leads into an almost aquatic black metal piece by Curse All Kings. An excerpt of a live set by drone group Growing helps us levitate into space for ten minutes. Aux Meadows’ tune sounds like an informal living room guitar-and-Casio jam. P:ano contribute an extremely lovely slowcore dirge with horns and harmonies, the kind of song you instantly feel like you’ve loved for years. Continuing in solo guitar drone territory, Builenradar is both hypnotic and rustic, while Somnambulists take off in an aerial drift. Marcus Fischer’s “Night Paving” is a very patient ambient piece steered by faint percussion. Then there’s longer, more freeform jams from the sax-and-drum Marshall Trammell & Paul Costuros Duo and Vietnamese collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi in exploratory rock mode. Disc 2 begins with a synth-rock quest from My Heart, An Inverted Flame which seems to march straight into a blinding light. The Drivers’ “For Oscar” is nothing but a focused, clapping drum beat for two and a half minutes. Nihar’s “Mercy On Thee” is an incredible post-techno exploraiton with springing metallic drum machine effects. Baus play jumpy indie post-punk, and Trough are heavy, unhinged thrashers; both bands’ songs barely last 2 minutes each. The Intima play complex, knotty post-punk made more tense and somewhat romantic with its prominent violin part. Low Praise’s “Forget That It’s Summer (Area Mann Disco Dub)” is a dance-punk club anthem that sounds straight off an old DFA 12″, like something that would’ve been revisited in the recent documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom. Then Exotic Gardens’ “Drugs & TV” jumps a decade forward into the hypnogogic pop era. A song by Eucalyptus recorded in 2006 sounds like Neu! but with more accelerated drumming and uplifting synths. Jonathan Snipes (clipping., Captain Ahab) does a creeping, minimal trap-ish synth instrumental. The piece by Ravon Chacon & Mark Trecka is a more distant industrial noise excavation which ends up having more acute sound design than it appears at first. EERIÆRMOR’s “Xiǎoxīn” starts out as corrupted noise, floats onward and brighter, then eventually gets overtaken by noise again, but emerges as a drifting light that won’t be extinguished. Second Dinner’s “Kinda Pandemonium” is a sprawling mess of wayward drums and blown-out fuzz that lives up to its title. Finally, it all comes to a close with a clear, resonant reflection from Giardini di Mirò with Daniel O’Sullivan.
« Previous Page —
Next Page »
The Answer Is In The Beat 