June 22, 2019 at 12:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pengo: File Under WTF??? LP
Pengo are a longstanding free rock collective from Rochester, New York whose members are behind the label Carbon Records. This album title is fitting more because of how unstructured and unpredictable the band’s music is rather than the level of bizarreness. A lot of it sounds like simmering and smoldering, with rusty, buzzing guitars swarming and drums erupting at will. That said, there’s certainly some head-scratching moments. The craggy distortion that opens “Bumper Stickers” will probably catch you off guard, and the enthusiastic YouTuber sampled at the beginning of the second side, who freaks out over witnessing some sort of rare locomotion, honestly kind of annoys me more than anything else. The best track is probably “Doorway to the Sky”, the steady extended jam that ends the first side. The end of the second side, “Doctrine of the Flame”, is also pretty swell.
June 21, 2019 at 9:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Tomasz Bednarczyk: Illustrations For Those Who
A few years ago, Tomasz Bednarczyk released an ambient album on Room40 under the name New Rome that I really enjoyed, and I was kind of astonished that nobody seemed to talk about it. I’m not sure if there’s a difference between New Rome and Bednarczyk’s material under his own name, but this is along the same lines as the New Rome album I heard, and it’s similarly fantastic. These pieces usually aren’t too long, and they all seem to suspend a certain moment at a specific location in time; titles like “Botanical Garden” and “Rainy Drive” (which samples rainfall and somehow manages to make it sound almost shoegazey) make it clear what’s going on. Although, “Sunny Ambient” is maybe a bit cloudier than you might expect. Still, it’s all relaxing and enjoyable; he gets a lot of mileage out of limited sets of grainy loops. Perhaps the best track is “Sunday”, a short piece which captures the gloominess of an uneventful weekend and makes it sound lovely.
June 20, 2019 at 6:09 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Neil Hamburger: Still Dwelling
The latest from America’s Funnyman is one of those albums where he sings. It’s not quite the sequel to
Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners, but it’s along the same lines — the songs are basically all about how much of a lonely, pathetic loser he is. But like that album, this is remarkably well produced and arranged. Aside from a version of Paul Simon’s “Homeward Bound”, he largely steps away from country, instead going for more of an epic ’60s orchestral pop sound. He turns a Mark Eitzel song (“Lonely”) into something that sounds like it could’ve been sung by Tom Jones, and he covers “Everything’s Alright” from
Jesus Christ Superstar, with Jack Black playing the role of Judas and Mike Patton as Jesus. He covers “Standing On the Corner” (“watching all the girls go by”) and “The Straight Life”, seemingly oblivious to how their lyrics simply wouldn’t fly today. Perhaps the funniest song here is the over-the-top rendition of “World Without Love”, and the album ends with a backhandedly optimistic original called “Little Love Cup”, with the moral of the story being that “nobody loves a hater”. While this might be the grandest, most accessible musical statement Neil has made, it’s still probably a lot funnier if you’re familiar with the character’s backstory. My favorite albums of his are still
Laugh Out Lord, the absolutely brutal
Hot February Night (performed in front of an unsuspecting crowd of Tenacious D fans), and the underrated radio drama
Great Moments at Di Presa’s Pizza’s House. This isn’t on the level of those, but like all of his albums, he’s doing something a little different and adding to his strange, hilarious legacy.
June 16, 2019 at 11:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Western Edges: Prowess CDr
This is the first release from the new solo project of Richard Adams from Hood. The short album primarily consists of brief ambient pieces which are built around simple, gentle melodies, floating between moments of reverie (“Suddenly a Dream”) and dark, fearful reflection and yearning (“Western Edges”, “You’re Going To Miss My Love”, and others). Surprisingly enough, some tracks also feature stiff, crunchy kick drums. “Solid Gold Soul” is a bit of bliss out in the tundra, while “Very Good on the Rushes” peers up at the stars hoping for release from soul-crushing loneliness, with a huge orb of bass and bitcrushed beats keeping hope alive. “Absence” is the only long track here, and it begins with a shower of synth pads before a sparse kick (similar to the Sight Below) comes in, followed by a dubby post-punk bassline and just a few synth notes, which nevertheless help keep things alert. Then it all strips away and all that’s left is the dusk.
June 16, 2019 at 11:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
SDEM: Index Hole 12″ EP
The latest release on the currently blazing-hot Central Processing Unit comes from a mysterious artist with a Slayer rip-off logo on his
Discogs page. Opening track “Arc Rail” is fast, hard, and crunchy electro-IDM which manages to keep directly on track. You can follow exactly where it’s going, yet it’s still a monster bowling over anything in its path. “BX16” is basically the opposite – slower, crushed stutter-breaks with very sparse layers of koto, or some other type of stringed instrument. Very subtle and nuanced, and there’s no obvious answer as to where this is going. Then “Mitherer” just drills your head in and repeatedly fills your brain with electric shocks until you start bleeding sparks. “6448” returns to the land of propulsive beats and buzzing synths which approximate a bassline, but this one’s more of a steady meander than a forceful progression. No telling what to expect from this artist from here, but I’m on board.
June 15, 2019 at 11:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Astounds: Ancient Flying Ghosts
The Astounds is the newest group fronted by Dean Wells, formerly of the Capstan Shafts. If you’ve heard that group, you pretty much know what to expect here: noisy, jangly, somewhat messy lo-fi indie rock similar to Guided By Voices. Like that band, as well as disciples such as Graham Repulski, this alternates super revved up, catchy tunes with brief, snippet-like tracks which nevertheless stand as their own compositions. “Holistic Missiles” is a minute-long psychedelic sway, which dovetails into the power pop anthem “Never Felt Alone” (which even has a guitar solo). Then there’s a brief acoustic bedroom lament called “Can We Go Too Far”, which precedes another full-band rocker, “New Lip Impressions”. The album continues in this fashion, ending with the driving singalong “Right Complete”, which stretches to an epic four minutes. Free download on
Bandcamp.
June 15, 2019 at 11:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Steven R. Smith: A Sketchbook of Endings
Space/psych rock veteran Steven R. Smith’s latest solo album is a concise set of instrumentals which generally last around 2 minutes, but are filled with moods and melodies. It feels more accurate to call this his idea of a pop album rather than the usual “soundtrack to an imagined film” cliche. Smith’s guitar, which sounds somewhat rustic yet hotwired, leads the charge, but he plays other instruments such as the spike fiddle and hurdy gurdy, giving songs like “Everything in Circles” a mini-epic Dirty Three-like feel. This guy has an extensive back catalog spanning work with groups such as Hala Strana, Thuja, and Ulaan Khol, plus over a dozen solo efforts, but this seems like the easiest introduction to all that.
May 28, 2019 at 8:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Martin Brandlmayr: Vive Les Fantômes
Composer/percussionist Martin Brandlmayr’s
Vive Les Fantômes is a radio play recorded for broadcast on German radio station SWR. It numerous snippets from interviews, rehearsals, and performances by jazz artists like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and the sounds are blipped in, repeated, and transformed throughout the 53-minute piece. Shocking bursts of horn and abrupt drum rolls pierce the ambient landscape, Miles Davis repeatedly talks about the sounds of astronauts taking off into space, Jacques Derrida answers his phone. Brandlmayr’s sparse, spacious drumming threads things together during several points. As with Negativland’s work, sounds repeat themselves in a way that both emphasizes their content and also turns them into a sort of meme-like running joke, but this mix isn’t nearly as dense or socially conscious. It’s a much more abstract collage which invites the listeners to reflect on what certain moments mean to them.
May 28, 2019 at 7:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Feeling Kréyol: Las Palé
This is a reissue of an incredibly rare zouk album produced in Guadeloupe during the late ’80s. The liner notes explain that the producer, Darius Dénon, put together the group (they had never met each other before) and wrote and arranged most of the songs. The album didn’t really go anywhere and the group never recorded anything else, but Dénon managed to have a successful career later. But as things happen, the album eventually attracted a cult audience, so here we have a reissue from Strut. Zouk is completely beyond my frame of knowledge, but this is a really fun, sweet album. It definitely doesn’t sound like the most professional recording in the world, but it’s incredibly charming, funky, and catchy. If you appreciate any of Awesome Tapes From Africa’s more synth-heavy reissues from around this time period (late ’80s/early ’90s), you’ll certainly fall for this one.
May 18, 2019 at 1:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment
Leaf Erikson: A Canvas Of Hope
Leaf Erikson represents Detroit to the fullest on his excellent new album. Produced entirely by Meftah (whose sister Tanya used to be a DJ at WCBN several years ago), the beats are abstract and jazzy, filled with vinyl crackle and lo-fi grittiness, but they avoid sounding like a direct copy of any other well-known producer. The lyrics are what really make the album shine, however, celebrating Detroit in spite of all of its problems. “D.R.E.A.M.” flips Wu-Tang’s anthem, declaring that “Detroit Rules Everything Around Me”, while “Foreclosure” talks about how various suburbs of Detroit (and even Detroit’s midtown) are becoming the hippest places in the area, while the hood is still being ignored. “H2O” also touches on gentrification as well as the continuing Flint water crisis. Still, there’s an extraordinary amount of hope and humility throughout, particularly on tracks like “Rescue Mission” and “Gospel from the North End”.
Strongly recommended.
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