December 31, 2017 at 9:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
An Gella: Perma
Danish producer Aske Zidore debuts his An Gella project with this album of suspenseful sound sorcery. There’s broken glass sounds and finely detailed sound design, and attention paid to various facets of current experimental club music, but it’s not quite rhythmic itself to really fit into such a category. There’s lengthy pauses and drifts, only to snap into a sharp rhythm, sometimes accompanied by indiscernible manipulated/robotic vocals. Some tracks lead into bursts of abject horror or pulverizing attacks, while gentle flamenco guitar guides “Ur Not Alone” and “Zen Cell” has a more hopeful trance-esque ecstasy-pulse to it. The acute, choppy digital explosions and pitched-up voices of “Non Spoken” make the track seem equally playful and threatening. It’s a strange and wondrous album, and it’s never clear what direction it’s going to take, but it’s always riveting, the arrangements and production are never less than jaw-dropping.
December 31, 2017 at 8:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Emptyset: Skin 12″ EP
Following a bracing album made from self-created instruments, Emptyset go acoustic on their latest EP. It sounds like they’re banging on some sort of drastically detuned hammer dulcimers, or otherwise something with lots of vibrating resonance and a heavy twang. Most of the tracks get lost in deeply immersive rhythms, with slow kicking drums and sweeps anchoring the thrashing and buzzing of the instruments. “Skin II” is shorter, softer, and more delicate, but the others build up into acoustic doom mantras. The duo reach some deep frequencies without the use of amplification, and even if these pieces aren’t quite as granulated as their digitally-created ones, they’re just as immense.
December 31, 2017 at 7:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Leyland Kirby: We, So Tired Of All The Darkness In Our Lives
Taking a break from the Caretaker’s dementia-themed final project, Leyland Kirby’s latest
pay-as-you-wish release, which seems to have escaped the typical shower of acclaim his work usually receives, consists of an hour and a half of slow, shadowy rhythms and cracking drums. It’s slow and stretched out, but not in a lazy, meandering way. There’s echoes of rave melodies and pianos, but transformed and drained of their ecstasy. It’s comforting, but also brittle and unsettling. Tracks such as the glorious “Dig Deep, March On” contain positive, encouraging messages even though they seem weary, exhausted, and trudging on. I’m sure fans of 2814 and other Dream Catalogue artists are all well aware of Kirby’s work, but in case they aren’t, this album provides a similar aesthetic, more so than the usual Kirby recording. The last track is called “Back in the Game”, but Kirby never left, and he arguably created it in the first place.
December 31, 2017 at 6:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Brett Naucke: Multiple Hallucinations tape
Brett Naucke’s
Multiple Hallucinations tape consists of numerous short passages stitched/melded together in a deliberate sequence. Constructed with modular synths, the pieces range from starry, melodic shimmers to abrasive drilling to unquantized rhythms, and there’s no clear beginning or end to them, and no telling when the next section is about to start. Everything’s overlapped and interacts with each other. The sections develop their own personalities and seem to usher in their companions, or sometimes spar and brawl with other parts. The last few minutes, beginning with the part featuring amorphous voices, are the most intense and brain-triggering. The overlapping text on the J-card seems to mention planets, strength, beauty, wisdom, numbers, zodiac signs, maybe specific pieces of gear. The music contains all of these things, usually at the same time.
December 31, 2017 at 5:25 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Moth Cock: 0-100 At The Speed Of The Present tape
Moth Cock’s first tape in 3 years features the types of jumbled jazz and corkscrew rhythms usually expected from the duo, but they also venture out into headier spaces this time, particularly on the 10-minute “Preserving Power of Pulp Paperbacks” and “World Weary Travelers”. This is dark crystal music, with horns and voices floating and evaporating, and heavy gases pressing down but also preserving and elevating. There’s still goose-like clarinet squawks and squishy, buzzy bass feedback tones, but so much more space. It’s still confounding and hard to make sense of, but maybe a bit less like Daffy Duck at his looniest than some of their other releases. It’ll still tie your brain in knots, but maybe more refined, less twisted knots than before. Just watch out for the sudden storms of delay-enhanced clarinet. Tape available from
HausMo’s Bandcamp.
December 31, 2017 at 4:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Bullshit Market/Dental Work: Straight Banana/Live At Midwest Harshfest 3 split tape
On their side of this split cassette, Detroit power electronics trio Bullshit Market debut their free jazz direction (unless they’ve done something like this before and I haven’t heard/seen it, which is entirely likely). There’s still some bursts of electronic noise, including some harsh electronic feedback and a Speak-N-Spell or similar robot-voiced toy, but much of this consists of unhinged drumming, demented scat singing, and acoustic noisemaking. There’s also some spoken word material, such as the parental abuse-themed “Ow Dad That Hurts” and “Inequality”, a brief poem about white privilege. Quite different sounding than the group’s usual output, but still confrontational and boundlessly expressive. On the other side, Dental Work presents their performance at Midwest Harshfest 3, which I missed because I was in Chicago that weekend. Dental Work’s performances are always visual as well as audio experiences, involving costumes, destruction, absurdity, and unpredictability. The visual and situational elements of their performance are lost on this tape, but the crowd interaction is captured, and the audience members react viscerally to the waves of heavy feedback and oscillation, and whatever’s being smashed onstage. The performance ends with chopping and crashing, as well as screams and chants of “Tru! Tru! Tru!” from the audience. Tape available from
Placenta Recordings’ Bandcamp.
December 25, 2017 at 8:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Build Buildings: Glass EP
Build Buildings has been making glitchy, melodic IDM for over a decade now, but only seems to have surfaced with a few small releases and comp appearances. This brief EP on Audiobulb sounds like windowpanes cut into different but still functional shapes, arranged into sounds. Bright and shining, reflecting everyday realities into different contexts. There’s only 4 songs and none of them last long, but it’s all calm, thoughtful, detailed, and uplifting. “Cedilla” features slightly harder beats than the other tracks, but being hard isn’t what this is about.
December 25, 2017 at 8:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Form a Log: At a Festival tape
Following a split LP with fellow troublemakers Moth Cock, Form a Log release their first Hausu Mountain tape. This is a barrage of pounding drums, frayed electronics, cartoonish guitars, and voices stretched past the limitations of the human body. Also, there’s some sort of ska theme apparent, at least in some of the track titles. There’s about as much wackiness as you might expect from FaL, but some of it sounds a bit more haunted. It’s not quite as carnivalesque as the title of the tape. “Raymond” is filled with ghostly moaning, and “This Is Your Captain Speaking” could be an abstract warning for an impending crash, but tracks like “The Sizzler” are goofy and joyous. Then there’s the lovely guitar strumming during “The Ska Files”, which gets interrupted by an ungrateful audience and a bunch of glitched-out harmonica and other noises.
December 25, 2017 at 6:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Anna Burch: Party tape
Anna Burch (Failed Flowers, Frontier Ruckus) released a split tape with Stef Chura last year, and she’s due to release her proper debut album on Polyvinyl next year, but this brief tape appeared this year. Crowd sounds are dubbed into the background, making it seem like a performance at a party or an open mic night, but the crowd obviously isn’t responding to the music or interacting with it in any way, so there’s a sort of awkward disconnect, and the lyrics seem related to this feeling. Super casual sounding, especially when Anna admits between songs that she messed up certain parts, but the songs themselves are really powerful. If this was an actual live recording, there’s no way the audience would be treating the music as background noise. Available directly from
Life Like, now in its second pressing.
December 25, 2017 at 6:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Utica: untitled tape
Hourlong debut tape from a trio containing members of other groups who have released tapes on Life Like (Hydropark, UZ, Land & Buildings). Edited down from improv sessions, these pieces shimmer like Fripp & Eno with some Roedelius piano magic mixed in, along with some synth spritz and more active/intricate basslines and patterns than you might imagine. Really floaty and daze-y but it still sounds like a lot of work was put into this, even though the sounds just seem to pour out from the musicians. Seriously wonderful and relaxing. Available directly from
Life Like.
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