The Answer Is In The Beat

Storm Ross: Home (Already Dead Tapes, 2019)

July 27, 2019 at 8:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest tape from formerly Michigan-based guitarist Storm Ross is “A Living Room Romance in Eight Parts”. Following the urgent but hopeful Welcome, Sunshine from a few years ago, this is another excellent collection of instrumentals. It kicks off with the monolithic “The Inevitability”, which begins acoustic before launching into a Godflesh-like drum machine beat and layers of guitars which just get heavier and more commanding. “A Park Encounter” is a strange, kind of fun industrial march with loads of shredding. “Playtime” is lighter, and more of a dazed daydream, while “The Turning Point” is more manic, with punkish drums and guitars that swarm and shriek like bats. On the second side, “An Understanding” laces acoustic guitars with ominous feedback, then “Sam Ascends the Invisible Path” starts out with nearly poppy-sounding synths before mesmerizing guitars take over. “Half Our Lives” is another 10-minute epic, this time with live drums instead of a drum machine. It’s much freer, sort of approaching a very electrified sort of jazz, but with guitar fireworks that nearly sound patriotic. It all comes full circle with the sparse acoustic guitar piece “Home”, making it feel like we’ve safely returned from battle.

Debugger: Thread Safety EP (Beatnik Boulevard, 2019)

July 19, 2019 at 6:39 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Microhouse is back!? This EP is a flashback to the sort of micro-edit-riddled click-house you probably haven’t even thought about since Akufen’s heyday. This artist doesn’t do the “surfing the dial” random samples the way Marc Leclair did, but he has a similar knack for twitchy yet danceable rhythms which slip in the occasional jazzy organ, soul vocal, or other traces of humanity into the android deep-house rave. Certainly this sound has been done before, but it was such a niche style then, and it’s been dormant for so long that it just ends up sounding like the future again.

Minimal Violence: InDreams (Technicolour, 2019)

July 19, 2019 at 6:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Vancouver duo Minimal Violence have made the undisputed best dark rave album of the year. Using nothing but analog hardware, they play fast, heavy, nightmarish techno that seems designed to trigger fear and excitement in equal measure. They mix vaguely trancey synths and gabber-ish beats on tracks like the punishing “June Anthem” and it never sounds contrived or cheesy. Then there’s “New Hard Catch”, which is somewhere between EBM and breakbeat hardcore, and just as awesome. “InDreams” is the album’s anthem, with an instantly iconic melody, and a remix by Cardopusher is rawer and more goth. Fantastic stuff.

Sam Hooker: On the Water (self-released, 2019)

July 19, 2019 at 5:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Well known throughout the Detroit noise scene for his solo project Tarpit, Michigan Underground Group member Sam Hooker’s latest album bears his own name. This is a disorienting set of pieces filled with ghastly tape loops, murmuring voices, and a constant feeling of being distracted and swept away, yet you’re still right in the center of everything. After the nearly nightmarish opening track, “Moving in the Way” is a flurry of detuned clatters and clangs with a sinister, tape-smudged monologue buried underneath. “On the Water” is a bit less musique concrete-sounding, with bells floating around scratchy, drawn-out guitar notes and resonations. “Smoke Downstairs” mixes creaking sounds with swerving bass and the vaguest hint of a bubbling melody, and sounds really bizarre, mysterious, and beautiful. “Seven Cars” had lots of wayward echo along with its lumbering thumps and sinister muttering. “Dock” feels like it was recorded on one during a coming storm, with splashing joined by booming noises with accelerate near the end. “Warm Down” is one of the trippiest tracks here, filled with ominous piano notes and some absolutely mutilated noises. A must for anyone who appreciates Aaron Dilloway, and other noise artists who focus more on tape manipulations and voices rather than harshness.

Rafael Anton Irisarri: Solastalgia (Room40, 2019)

July 12, 2019 at 8:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Rafael Anton Irisarri continues to tower over everyone in his ability to build these dense, overwhelming, abundantly emotional musical environments. The title Solastalgia refers to mental or existential distress caused by environmental change, and that could refer to the entire globe, but it takes on a more personal tone knowing Irisarri’s recent past (all of he and his wife’s belongings were stolen when they were preparing to move a few years ago). Either way, this is heavy, devastating stuff, compounding gloom and hope and anger and despair until it all just becomes this giant all-consuming force. If you’re familiar with his other Room40 releases like The Unintentional Sea and A Fragile Geography, this is a similar type of experience, and just as vital.

Pas Musique: The Phoenix (Alrealon Musique, 2019)

July 12, 2019 at 8:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Pas Musique’s latest mixes several types of rhythms with improvised sounds and vocals. It’s industrial, Krautrock, noise rock, and techno all at the same time, and while it could be overwhelming or messy, it works. There’s a few sampled snippets (including a bit about an electronic brain, and one assuring that you’re among friends), but the actual vocals are all stretched, contorted vocalizations rather than lyrics. You think they’re saying something just outside of your comprehension, but it’s all an illusion. But it still feels like they’re speaking in some sort of code and this is a transmission from a top secret lab somewhere. Not to mention, there’s a song on here called “Miss Globule”, which I assume is a takeoff on a certain Stereolab song, and anyway it’s just fun to say globule.