April 18, 2018 at 10:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Jesusbeams: E crack EP
The artist also known as Evil Robot Ted has been quietly releasing music as Jesusbeams for a few years now.
E crack is one of two recent EPs, and it’s a short blast of fast, fractured beats, but not exactly in a breakcore way. The first three tracks are brief, explosive, and pretty much entirely percussive, and aren’t all that different from each other, so they can all be taken as one track. “Atrax (Slow)” is much different, sounding like listening to a droning robot from the other end of a vast, dying factory.
Jesusbeams: Exphr EP
The other recent EP,
Exphr, is noisy ambient glitch, with crystalline melodies shredded into shards over a faint click track. Once you get into the headspace, it projects directly into your mind and distorts your dreams. The rhythms push and pull, then free themselves, leaving starry residue. The last track is a noise piece, which slowly grinds upwards, revealing some zig-zagging sparks, but then getting completely electro-shocked out by the end.
April 18, 2018 at 10:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Rob Clouth: Transition EP
Rob Clouth has previously released music on Traum Schallplatten and Detroit Underground, and his latest work arrives on Max Cooper’s Mesh label. Not enough people are familiar with Cooper, but if you are, this is similarly elegant, melodic, and brimming with exquisitely detailed sound design. Opener “Silica” sounds like it’s sampling bottles clanking and drumming on pots and pans, but it’s so fast, intricate, and rhythmic (not to mention bass-heavy) that it doesn’t register as a sound collage. “Like a Second Sun” skitters and lunges, scattering odd sounds and voices across the board, but the pianos keep everything grounded. Then they get glitched up and the beat kicks into footwork mode. “Shedding Layers” is a long techno track with a twitchy beat and slowly encircling synths. The electronic filtering makes it sound like there’s tense strings bowing rapidly, foreshadowing some sort of attack. “Transition” scrambles voices until they’ve turned into seafoam.
Rob Clouth: Transition Remixes EP
Once we’re done with this short but fascinating ride, there’s the remixes. Max Cooper’s “Shedding Layers” is at least as club-friendly as the original, but also packs in a mind-numbing amount of rapid glitches. Ben Lukas Boysen’s “Transition” begins with the scrambled voices of the original, but eventually fuzz and scattered melodies and sunbeams win out. The mysterious Brecon turns “Silica” into even more of a head-nodder (just watch for those flying knives), while Chihei Hatakeyama suspends and dissolves the glitchy kitchenware percussion in his usual high-floating cumulus clouds. The remixes are really good but the originals are outstanding.
April 14, 2018 at 8:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Machine Girl: …Because I’m Young Arrogant And Hate Everything You Stand For tape
Both of these have been out for a bit, and anyone who loves Machine Girl has heard them already, but I just recently copped them on cassette when MG played at Detroit’s El Club last month, so it’s worth posting a review of them.
…Because I’m Young is a turning point in Machine Girl’s discography, transforming it from a gabber-juke mutant hybrid solo project into a proper band, translating the duo’s live show to audio. This is easily the closest I’ve heard anyone come to making something that sounds like Digital Hardcore Recordings, but updated for the current musical landscape, and 100% relevant. Highly aggressive without being cheesy, smashing anarchist punk and gabber and vaporwave together, sounding equally pissed off and bouncing-off-the-walls ecstatic. “Bullet Hell” is the pogo-friendly highlight, and the modem squeal in the middle is one of many things which pushes it over the top. The last track is called “It Takes A Nation Of Millenials To Destroy A Nation Of Millions…” and it’s an oddly uplifting evil happy hardcore pep talk. All of this breaks new ground and smashes down walls, and like tourmate/splitmate Five Star Hotel, Machine Girl somehow continually outdoes himself every single time.
Machine Girl: MRK90 Mix Vol. 1 tape
Since the proper album dropped last year, Machine Girl has also released a
mixtape containing an hour-long barrage of unreleased tracks, bootleg remixes, stray ideas, and other ephemera. This one’s way more ravey than what Machine Girl currently plays live, and closer to some of his earlier releases, but still more of a DJ mix than a collection of tracks. It starts out close to breakbeat hardcore, with heavy, choppy breaks and Dizzee Rascal samples. It continues with fast 4/4 beats, sounding unusually straightforward for Machine Girl but still pretty fun. Then there’s a “nuclear apocalypse” bit which flips the switch into hard jungle. The second side continues the journey, delving into some bouncy juke, some acid, and some Missy Elliott samples. Then there’s an atmospheric jungle remix of Sade which has breakbeats just a little bit too mangled and shredded and current-sounding to sound like it wasn’t actually produced in 1995. The last few minutes are drum’n’bass bent slightly out of shape, with an odd time signature but a steady, propulsive drive. The mixtape overall seems a lot looser and less angsty and intense than most Machine Girl, perhaps making it more danceable or easier to put on as background music or something.
April 6, 2018 at 8:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Whetzel: Slow Waves
Genre-evasive multi-instrumentalist James Whetzel ventures into ambient music with this extremely slow-moving CD. It’s not just typical chill-out music, however; as the liner notes explain, Whetzel tried to make music so slow it would freeze time. Instead of being some sort of glacial dark ambient release, however, this is still clearly meant for relaxation, and it feels warm and earthy rather than dead frozen and arctic. The title track claims to be only 4 BPM, but that’s because the percussive thumps are separated by lengthy gaps. The ethereal guitars seem to be floating by at a faster rate. And even though the songs are all set at slow tempos (with 57 BPM being the ceiling), many of them are subtly tucked into unconventional time signatures. If they were fast, they might seem complex, but here they’re completely unwound, so they’re utterly soothing. As with much of Whetzel’s work, organic instrumentation seems to take precedence over electronics, although there are some synthesizers swells. The guitars often evoke Kranky artists such as Windy & Carl or Labradford. “Ole’s Dream” is probably the strangest, trippiest track here, due to its constant backwards effects — and somehow it’s one of the two tracks listed as being in 4/4 time. A pretty unique approach to ambient music, and yes, it is very relaxing.
April 6, 2018 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Shark Toys: Labyrinths
L.A.’s Shark Toys make their In The Red debut with this appropriately direct and scorching full-length. For much of the album, the group bash out one-two rhythms, repeat a few wiry riffs, and howl out lyrics in a high register, then stop on a dime after a minute or two. That’s not all the band does, however, and as basic as they might seem on the surface, they’re not formulaic. Following a breakneck cover of Mission of Burma’s “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate”, the group offer a response called “No Escape” which bluntly repeats “I want you to know that the end is near” along with suffocating guitars and showers of sax from Mikal Cronin. While that song pushes into a greater intensity level than the rest of the album, the other songs are still pretty wired, and they also tend to bleat out expressions of frustration, confusion, and feeling trapped. Cronin pops in for some more jolts of sax voltage, with “Jazz Suss” ending the album in a near-eruption, and there’s a little bit of abstract synth trickery on tracks like “Three Dogs”. It all pounds, and if you’re into Tyvek, or any other similar bands on ITR, you will be all over this.
April 6, 2018 at 6:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Professor Rhythm: Bafana Bafana
Thami Mdluli is a highly successful South African producer often associated with the style of African pop known as bubblegum, which was popular in the 1980s. Eventually his fans demanded that he started making instrumental recordings, so he adopted the pseudonym Professor Rhythm and began making electronic dance music which bore striking similarities to the then-developing house and garage genres. This is a reissue of a cassette from sometime during the ’90s, and like other period releases that ATFA has reissued, it’s another fascinating merge of then-up-to-date technology with African pop traditions. Actually, this release is far more focused on electronic rhythms, and while there are vocals, there aren’t full verses, and they’re mostly sung in English. The songs are a little bit slower than most house music, potentially drawing comparisons to Belgian new beat, but there’s much more of a rich, bouncy, sensuous sound to these productions, with lots of garage-ish bass tones. The lyrics, as minimal as they are, to tracks like “Leave Me Alone” and “Release Me” point to being trapped in a relationship, or at least infatuation. The vocals alternate between full-bodied diva wails common to the most club-friendly house music and more restrained male vocals. All of the songs are 4 minutes long, and while they all sound pretty similar, they’re all equally effective ass-shakers.
March 29, 2018 at 7:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
River Spirit: EP 2 tape
Detroit trio River Spirit play a gently abstract form of experimental pop, highlighted by Vanessa Reynolds’ vocals, which constantly twist like vines. Their songs seem a bit tense, certainly affected by the frustrations of the world as well as personal isolation, but they’re ultimately strong, uplifting and vibrant. This EP is more electronic than their first one, and the languid but tricky beats and dreamy atmospheres elevate their songs into a strange yet warm and comforting space. The short EP goes by quickly, and all of it sounds wonderful, but they save the best song for last. “Dime” has sluggish trip-hop beats and the right amount of heavenly echo on the vocals, not to mention some big, bulging bass tones. This is a song I’m finding myself hitting rewind on (literally, since it’s a tape). Hear for yourself at
Bandcamp.
March 25, 2018 at 2:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Arthur King & The Night Sea: Unknown Movie Night: Pi
The second LP from this L.A. improv group in less than a year was recorded as a score to the film
Pi, screened as a total surprise to both the audience and the band. Each side of the record is 31 minutes and 41 seconds of loose, lush, flowing dub-jazz, sometimes launching into ragged see-saw rhythms, sometimes flowing calmly like a dark river on a languid summer night (not unlike the group’s name). The second side starts out in the less-busy mode, but things get really obtuse around the 15-minute mark, with far more wavy delay, jazzy figures, and real-time electro beats. It still ends up being largely serene, however.
March 11, 2018 at 5:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pursuit Grooves: Felt Armour
Long before “deconstructed club” and “weightless” became buzzwords in the electronic music press, Vanese Smith was making music which greatly reconsidered how beats can be put together, what sounds can be looped into rhythms, what can be rhymed or sung over, and also what can be absent. She’s spent much of the last three years working more on graphic design than music, but her latest album as Pursuit Grooves has surfaced, and it’s another reminder of how brilliant she is. The title
Felt Armour suggests a duality between toughness and sensitivity, and the tracks feature rhythms built from blunt, concrete noises, sometimes sounding like firing bullets, opening doors, or hard crashes. But instead of beating you over the head with abrasion, the sounds are smoothed out with contemplative synth pads and soothing bass tones. There’s similarities between these tracks and the ones she produced as 91 Fellows, but these aren’t quite as suspenseful or dubby. All of these tracks are instrumental, and they’re generally midtempo; they’re not conventional dance music, but not entirely removed from it, either. The sounds are shaped into abstract rhythms, without heavy kick drums or basslines that explicitly invite dancing. There’s movement and progression, but also zero-gravity floating. It might take several listens to adjust, but if it clicks, there’s little else that can approximate how it feels. Also, it probably goes without saying that you need to listen to this at high volume, with speakers equipped for handling heavy bass. Available to stream and purchase on
Bandcamp.
March 10, 2018 at 5:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Seth Graham: Gasp LP
Seth Graham’s first vinyl LP (following a grip of cassettes, both solo and with Keith Rankin as Cream Juice) continues in the hyperrealist mode as the majority of Orange Milk’s recent output, acting as a more classical-influenced counterpoint to the latest Giant Claw album, and also complementing the label’s recent Noah Creshevsky album/anthology. This one certainly doesn’t sound as squishy and slurpy as 2014 tape
Goop. Instead, it’s more focused on brief pieces consisting of heavily glitched shreds of stringed instruments and voices, flickering across a backdrop of silence. Some tracks like “Binary Tapioca” head into a bit more of a rhythm, and are more heavily populated with sounds, but I don’t want to say they’re overstuffed or dense because it still feels like there’s so much space to them. There’s so many moments where everything seems still for a while, then several sounds crash through at once, and it rapidly switches between being ecstatic, silly, frightening, regal, and somewhat melancholy. “Mas Que Fin” basically sounds like someone circuit bent or hacked into an episode of Teletubbies. The brief final track “Talk” seems to mangle, stretch, and condense an epic string crescendo into a minute and a half, leaving out any anticipation-building tension and just delivering a grating rush, then slapping it down and ending suddenly as if nothing happened.
Gasp is such a perfect title for an album so breathtaking, yet also concise.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 