March 17, 2019 at 2:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dr. Pete Larson and the Seething Snakes: Omieri tape
documents a one-off performance in New Orleans featuring Dr. Pete Larson (who co-founded the legendary Bulb Records in the early ’90s) playing a
nyatiti (a Kenyan plucked lyre, as seen on the cover of the tape) along with Quintron playing a Mellotron and a trio of other friends on bass, guitar, and drums. Named after a giant magical snake which gives fortune to all around her,
Omieri contains four lengthy jams which veer between spiritual jazz and psych-rock, with the Mellotron adding spacey effects beneath the winding rhythms. It all has a very natural-sounding flow to it; even when it has slightly oblong time signatures, the playing doesn’t sound forced, and the instrumentation sets it apart without sounding outlandish. Extremely positive and uplifting, and absolutely worth preserving.
Dr. Pete Larson: Snakes and Nyatitis tape
Also appearing concurrently is
Snakes and Nyatitis, a solo performance by Larson recorded at the wonderful Ziggy’s in Ypsilanti. Occasionally stomping and clanging some bells along with his plucking, he plays a trance-inducing set of fast, complex note patterns, gradually hitting some lower frequencies. The final half gets particularly riveting, but Larson sounds genuinely inspired throughout.
March 17, 2019 at 1:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Disaster Passport: Score tape
Madison, Wisconsin quartet Disaster Passport composed an alternate score for a filming of
Koyaanisqatsi last year. This recording presents the performance of the score, and it’s a warm, slowly unfolding piece of cosmic Americana. The band’s lineup consists of two banjo players, a baritone guitar player, and a percussionist. After a slow warmup, it moves into a series of rustic, hypnotic movements which seem to fuse bluegrass with desert blues (and probably other styles I’m not picking up on). It’s unhurried, with lots of vibrant soloing, but the music doesn’t stay in one place for too long. It never resembles the iconic Philip Glass score of the original, but its influence is unmistakable, particularly in the pacing of the score’s second half, which features soft hums/chants followed by rhythmic clapping. The full score can be downloaded from
Bandcamp.
March 16, 2019 at 4:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dead Man’s Chest & Posse: SNRK018 12″ EP
Dead Man’s Chest is one of the absolute best artists making oldskool jungle right now, and Sneaker Social Club has similarly been issuing top-notch breakbeat hardcore and neo-rave music. This EP isn’t quite as heavy and junglistic as other DMC releases. Most of the tracks are collaborations and they’re a bit more spacious and club-friendly. “We All Got a Little Mad Sometimes” (with Response) is straight up alien-channeling music; I can’t tell where that droney synth bed is from but it sounds like some sort of horrifying sci-fi thriller. “The Dead Will Dance” (with Coco Bryce) has fun with zombie movie samples and an evil bassline. Solo track “Exorcisms” is all storming breaks and horror movie samples (at least one is from
Poltergeist), and it’s equally fun and terrorizing.
March 16, 2019 at 3:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Meat Beat Manifesto: Pin Drop 12″
I drove to Chicago to see MBM at the Coldwaves festival last year, and it was probably the best set I’ve ever seen them play. Granted, the first two times, I was seated and at a distance; this time I was right up front in the crowd, and it was exhilarating. Super hard, funky, and manic, with amazing visuals. They played a lot of old classics too, which was great, but the new stuff they announced as being from their next album was spectacular. “Pin Drop” was a particular highlight. Very choppy and breaky but not quite jungle by numbers. It’s more proto-jungle, which makes sense seeing that MBM arguably invented jungle with tracks like “Radio Babylon” back in the ’80s. B-side “No Design” is pretty much the same track except it’s actually a bit faster and crazier. MBM are one of my favorite bands ever and their new album is going to be astonishing.
March 10, 2019 at 3:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Joni Void: Mise En Abyme
Joni Void’s second album is a reconstructive snapshot of various aspects of the Montreal-based artist’s life, built from sounds captured from daily occurrences, recordings of family events such as weddings and birthday parties, and even samples from throughout the album itself. The first half is based on performances by guest vocalists, and combined with airy textures and clicky beats, it’s not too far off from Mira Calix’s older albums and EPs for Warp. The album seems to be about communication and recording; “No Reply” is made from phone sounds and some modem noises, and “Cinetrauma” has a beat constructed from camera clicks and whirrs. The second half is definitely more claustrophobic than the first, peaking in the text-to-speech exorcism of “Deep Impression”, although “Persistence” is a more reflective denouement. “Resolve” is a whirlwind of moments from throughout the album set to an early Boards of Canada track.
March 9, 2019 at 8:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Light Conductor: Sequence One (Constellation, 2019)
Departing from the dreamy indie rock of their respective main bands, Young Galaxy and the Besnard Lakes, Stephen Ramsay and Jace Lasek venture through several different shades of space rock on their first album as Light Conductor. The lengthy opener “A Bright Resemblance” does the standard “set the controls for the heart of the sun” mode of droning, with several layers of modular synth pulsations phasing and dancing around each other. This extends into “Chapel of the Snows”, which develops an overwhelming, all-consuming cloud of guitar noise. “Far from the Warming Sun” is a 10-minute skim of the surface of Mars not unlike early Cluster/Kluster, but with a broken, humming static pulse. “When the Robot Hits the Water” is a slowly shifting, ticking beat with a rapid arpeggio threading through it, building up anticipation for “Light Conductor” (the song). Following the previous track’s pulse, it explodes into color after nearly two minutes, turning into futuristic psych-rock which really does sound like Spacemen 3 being beamed into a distant galaxy.
March 9, 2019 at 6:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Basic Rhythm: New Style 12″ EP
The latest EP from Anthoney J Hart bends grime and garage rhythms into club tracks which feel a little clinical but also have an undeniable amount of floor power to them. Snippets of pirate radio ragga chatter are abound, and “Too Nuff” lets some Moodymann-like pads float among its industrial-tuff beats. “Ready Again” is far more minimal and almost struggles to hold together; it would probably be a lot harder to work it into a set than the other tracks. But the more active tracks hint at the London warehouse vibe while taking it somewhere else.
March 2, 2019 at 8:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Nonlocal Forecast: Bubble Universe! tape
The newest project from Angel Marcloid isn’t as chaotic as Fire-Toolz, but it’s still as intensely detailed and genre-agnostic. It’s a bright, glittering blend of prog-rock, jazz fusion, nature sounds, and what new age would sound like if it was made by hyperactive kids. Fire-Toolz is actually credited as a featured artist on “Triangular Format”, one of the album’s most ambient tracks. “Classical Information” is a laid-back stroll through a crystal village, and “Foam, Vacuum, Om” is a rippling, refractive reflection. “Conscious Agent Combos” works a perky Muzak melody into its meditation, and “Wave Nature” concludes the tape with a living forest aglow with harmonic vibrations.
March 1, 2019 at 10:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Model Home: 1 LP
I’m having a hard time finding any information about this group, and I missed their recent show in Hamtramck, but this is an absolutely jawdropping noise/hip-hop project from DC. They’ve released 6 albums on
Bandcamp since last June, and an LP of their
first one showed up on my desk at WCBN and it knocked me into a stupor. Very, very strange street poetry smothered by cracked electronics and spluttering drum machines. On tracks like “Center Uv the World Swing”, all of the sounds are jumbled together and struggling to break free and it sounds marvelous. “Move Immediately” and a few other moments seem to have a dancehall influence seep into them, while “Jungle Tape” sounds like just that, if it were being blasted from a malfunctioning tape deck in a sewer. “Fake Feet” inevitably brings to mind Chicago footwork, but if anything, this is closer to the stranger corners of that style like DJ Nate or RP Boo than the more danceable stuff from the Teklife crew. The LP ends with an unlisted bonus track filled with shout-outs and excited synth bubbles and bloops. Super exciting, way avant-garde stuff recommended for fans of Occasional Detroit and Sensational at his weirdest.
March 1, 2019 at 6:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Zilched: Pulling Teeth 7″ EP
Detroit trio Zilched play a hazy sort of garage-psych-gaze. While the vocals are sometimes submerged under guitar fuzz and tape hiss, the lyrics are uncomfortably direct, reflecting an inescapable loneliness, even when in the company of others. The chorus to “Tool” laments “I’m so sorry that I get so lonely at night, I can’t help it if I wanted you only”. “From the Grave” is slower and has more of a rumbling bassline, and a slightly more hopeful outlook. The B-side contains “Hollow”, a shambling, jangly indie pop tune which is easily the highlight of the EP. “(hatefucked)” is one of the record’s more upbeat-sounding songs, but the lyrics are actually quite deadly. The group obviously haven’t been around for too long, and they sound pretty shaky, but there’s some exciting songs on here. Digitally available at
Bandcamp.
« Previous Page —
Next Page »
The Answer Is In The Beat 