November 28, 2018 at 10:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Devata Daun: Pye Luis
Devata Daun’s first album,
L o o k, was one of my favorite out-of-nowhere surprises of 2016, and one of the best lo-fi pop releases in recent memory. I wrote up a review of it for Decoder, but that site seems to be down indefinitely, so I can’t link to it, but the album is a must-hear (and a name-your-price DL on Bandcamp).
Pye Luis is the follow-up EP, and it retains the distinctive warbling-tape sound, but the vocals are clearer, and there’s more slow jams. Songs like “Mademosielle” have warped textures and haunting melodies, but an undeniable R&B/pop core. “Weakening” is just magical, and the lyrics capture that restless crush feeling. The last two songs even include saxophone, for that extra romantic touch. Also available from
Bandcamp.
November 25, 2018 at 4:29 pm | Posted in Photos | Leave a comment
I drove to Los Angeles and back by myself again. I took the most direct there, going through Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, etc., but on the way back I improvised and ended up going through locations such as Joshua Tree, Arizona, Santa Fe, and Kansas City. Here’s some of the most interesting things I saw.
rest stop in Iowa
rest stop in Iowa
rest stop in Colorado, I think
waking up in Colorado after a snowstorm
still driving west
I arrived in Los Angeles one of the few times in year that it rained. From the roof of my sister’s apartment
walking around North Hollywood
courtyard view from the patio of my sister’s apartment
farmer’s market in Hollywood
subway station near my sister’s apartment
Tessa playing with Lambchop
vegan food truck fair
more walking around Hollywood
California Institute of Abnormalities
fountain at restaurant me and my cousin ate brunch at
driving east, wind turbines everywhere
Joshua Tree!
Cholla cactus garden
Kingman, Arizona
Kingman, Arizona
Slide Rock State Park, Sedona, Arizona
downtown Santa Fe
downtown Santa Fe
Santa Fe Art Museum
more scenes from downtown Santa Fe
small record store in downtown Santa Fe
Rio Grande
Kansas City
sculpture outside jazz museum
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Josey Records
Josey Records (R.I.P. Phife)
Barney in an alley
Revolution Records
November 24, 2018 at 7:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Anna Burch/Fred Thomas: split 7″
Anna and Fred both released fantastic albums this year, and they recently toured and put out this tour-only single. Anna’s side is a steady, lovely tune with lots of snowy echo over the vocals, and a general easygoing tone but typically cutting lyrics (“said a little Irish prayer, when all I wanted was for you to care”). Fred’s side is in the vein of his recent albums, pairing hooky indie rock with wordy narratives about touring, avoiding cops, and more importantly, the thoughts, feelings, and realizations surrounding all of these, eventually arriving at the point that “you could be happy”.
November 24, 2018 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Bonnie Baxter: Ask Me How Satan Started tape
Kill Alters’ Bonnie Baxter goes solo with
this astounding tape of overloaded rhythms and fractured vocals. This one builds gigantic boulders of thunderous, speaker-ripping beats, all polyrhythmic and constantly building and mutating, amalgamating juke, industrial, techno, and punk. The distortion on this album is just absolutely delicious. “Vivid” is the hair-raising centerpiece, and a glorious nightmare that I never want to end. At a couple points throughout the album, excerpts of a childhood conversation where Baxter asks her mom to, yes, “ask me how Satan started” pop up, balancing innocence with evil. The first three tracks on the second side stand alone as their own majestic hell-suite, and the tape ends with “Satan’s Angels”, a frightening yet somehow soothing collage of an evangelism broadcast, ethereal cooing, and hazy industrial droning. A very fresh, original take on rhythmic noise, and a flat-out exciting release.
November 24, 2018 at 3:46 pm | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment
2:00 am Shorelights (local) ~ Late Summer Rain ~ Ancient Lights (new) ~ Subwax BCN ~ 2018
2:11 am Christoph De Babalon ~ Broken Land ~ In Death’s Dream Kingdom (new) ~ Houndstooth ~ 2018
2:16 am Brecon ~ Scarp (Om Unit Remix) ~ Cairn Remixes (new) ~ Mesh ~ 2018
2:20 am Crypticz ~ Lost One ~ The Path (new) ~ Cosmic Bridge ~ 2018
2:26 am Etch ~ Black Rainbow ~ Ups & Downs (new) ~ Sneaker Social Club ~ 2018
2:32 am Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society ~ She Brought the Sun ~ Wow and Flutter (new) ~ Six Degrees ~ 2018
2:40 am redHat ~ Ry ~ Lost.In (new) ~ Sick Broken Brothers Records ~ 2018
2:45 am Laxenanchaos ~ Mahoroba ~ Bipolar Order (new) ~ Cock Rock Disco ~ 2018
2:52 am WORKFLOWW ~ Turbo ~ Never Normal Soundsystem Singles (new) ~ Never Normal ~ 2018
2:54 am Local Group ~ Laser Dome (Dexorcist Remix) ~ Laser Dome EP (new) ~ Ritual Poison ~ 2018
3:00 am Deapmash ~ Halcyon (VIP) ~ Halcyon EP ~ Leisure Sisyem ~ 2017
3:05 am Aaron Spectre ~ Respect This Sound ~ Destroy Oh Boy #2 (new) ~ Destroy Oh Boy ~ 2018
3:09 am Dev/Null ~ This Isn’t LA ~ mp3 (new) ~ Soundcloud ~ 2018
3:11 am Christoph De Babalon ~ Harakiri ~ Hectic Shakes (new) ~ Alter ~ 2019
3:17 am Bamba Pana ~ Kusini ~ Poaa (new) ~ Nyege Nyege Tapes ~ 2018
3:21 am VXO ~ Alcanzarme ~ VXO EP (new) ~ Vanity Press Records ~ 2018
3:25 am Niagara 40 ~ Apologia (new) ~ Príncipe ~ 2018
3:29 am Black Noi$e (local) ~ Oizo ~ Illusions (new) ~ Vanity Press Records ~ 2018
3:33 am Suzi Analogue ~ Real 2Gether ~ Chills + Thrills ~ Never Normal ~ 2014
3:36 am Britney Stoney (local) ~ Stay Down ~ Native EP ~ self-released ~ 2015
3:38 am MIKE w/ Cheikhuana Bamba Fall ~ Of Home ~ Black Soap (new) ~ Lex ~ 2018
3:41 am Bonnie Baxter ~ Vivid ~ Ask Me How Satan Started (new) ~ Hausu Mountain ~ 2018
3:47 am Sense Fracture ~ War You Mirror ~ In My Escape I Look For A Weapon (new) ~ Haunter Records ~ 2018
3:51 am iZueL_ ~ Es Ist Auch Schon Jemand Zu Vermissen ~ We Will Never Be So Cool (new) ~ Degenerate Trifecta ~ 2018
3:56 am I-LP-ON ~ Poble Dub ~ Äänet (new) ~ Editions Mego ~ 2018
4:00 am Bliss Signal ~ Bliss Signal ~ Bliss Signal (new) ~ Profound Lore ~ 2018
4:02 am Author & Punisher ~ Night Terror ~ Beastland (new) ~ Relapse ~ 2018
4:08 am Colin Self ~ Research Sister ~ Siblings (new) ~ Rvng Intl ~ 2018
4:14 am Vessel ~ Argo (For Maggie) ~ Queen Of Golden Dogs (new) ~ Tri Angle ~ 2018
4:19 am Max Cooper ~ Platonic ~ One Hundred Billion Sparks (new) ~ Mesh ~ 2018
4:25 am I Am Robot And Proud ~ A Dot In Air ~ Lucky Static (new) ~ Darla ~ 2018
4:29 am Tangent ~ Confinement ~ Approaching Complexity (new) ~ n5MD ~ 2018
4:36 am Longmont Potion Castle ~ Electric Talk ~ Where In The Hell Is The Lavender House? Original Soundtrack (new) ~ Burger Records ~ 2018
4:42 am Pepper Mill Rondo ~ Garmin Universe ~ E.D.M. (new) ~ Hausu Mountain ~ 2018
4:45 am Objekt ~ Silica ~ Cocoon Crush (new) ~ Pan ~ 2018
4:48 am Bernard Parmegiani ~ Versailles... Peut-être I ~ Mémoire Magnétique, Vol 1. (new) ~ Transversales Disques ~ 2018
4:52 am Nunu ft. DJH ~ SCUM 6 ~ SCUM (new) ~ Astral Plane ~ 2018
4:55 am Secundus ~ Morningstar ~ Secundus (new) ~ Car Crash Set ~ 2018
4:58 am Silkie ~ Don’t DJ For Free ~ single (new) ~ Pretty Weird Records ~ 2018
5:04 am Ouri ~ Escape ~ We Share Our Blood (new) ~ Ghostly International ~ 2018
5:07 am Little Dragon ~ Timothy ~ Lover Chanting EP (new) ~ Ninja Tune ~ 2018
5:11 am Amber Mark ~ High On Your Love ~ 12″ (new) ~ W Records ~ 2018
5:14 am Spontaneous Overthrow ~ Overthrow Groove ~ All About Money ~ Numero Group ~ 1984
5:20 am Axis: Sova ~ New Disguise ~ Shampoo You (new) ~ God? ~ 2018
5:23 am Shnabubula ~ Aqua Fever ~ Game Genie ~ Hausu Mountain ~ 2011
5:29 am Stray Theories ~ Challenge ~ All That Was Lost (new) ~ n5MD ~ 2018
5:35 am System ~ Plus ~ Plus (new) ~ Morr Music ~ 2018
5:46 am Lapalux ~ BELOW ~ ABOVE_BETWEEN_BELOW (new) ~ Brainfeeder ~ 2018
5:51 am Less Bells ~ Golden Storm ~ Solifuge (new) ~ Kranky ~ 2018
5:55 am Heinali ~ Starling Reprise II ~ Iridescent (new) ~ Injazero ~ 2018
November 23, 2018 at 10:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Don Fiorino/Andy Haas: American Nocturne
captures live, overdub-free improvisations between guitarist Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, who plays sax, electronics, and drum machines. Fiorino plays lap steel and “glissentar”, so there’s a slippery, fluid, weeping tone to much of his playing, and Haas often sounds like he’s playing digital tablas or scratching turntables, in addition to layering blankets of sax on the title track. There’s never a locked-in rhythm here, it all sounds fuzzy, gelatinous, and malleable. Lots of pitch-bending and flipping and stretching, yet it doesn’t sound as blasted or druggy as, say, Black Dice/Eric Copeland. Fiorino’s playing still has an earthy quality to it, sometimes veering towards country while floating closer to desert blues on the epic “Days of Jackals”. Other times, it’s more of a detached downtown skronk. The sounds contrast, but they never really feel like they’re clashing, even if they rarely seem like they’re trying to interact with each other. It’s somewhat challenging to listen to, but instead of seeming confrontational, it invites you to join in somehow, and following the individual sounds becomes an adventure.
November 23, 2018 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Shnabubula: Game Genie tape
How on earth did it take this long for Hausu Mountain to release a chiptune album?! Unless I’m forgetting something. But considering how the label’s visual aesthetic is heavily based on pixelated artwork (as well as, well, millions of other things), one might initially think they’re closely related to the chip scene. This is the first (AFAIK) cassette release from scene veteran Samuel Ascher-Weiss, who contributed to the infamous/controversial Miles Davis tribute
Kind of Bloop nearly a decade ago. This album, originally released on
Bandcamp in 2011, owes equally to 16-bit video game compositions, jazz fusion, prog-rock, and J-pop. It’s filled with complex time signatures, virtuosic playing, and an overall sense of embarking on a grand quest, but with an undying sense of optimism and glee. It is, without mincing words, a pure joy to listen to. While always sounding like it’s emanating from a vintage console, the music always bursts with excitement, and so much passion is put into the arrangements. “Aqua Fever” is the most “live”-sounding track, with acoustic-sounding drums and fluid bass soloing, while the title track is arguably the most overwhelming and complex (although really, all of this is). I must admit that even though I’ve always had an enormous amount of love and respect for the chiptune scene, I haven’t paid much attention to it since I moved from New York in 2009. This tape reissue is a reminder of how creative the scene can be at its best, and
Game Genie was entirely worth digging up and presenting to a new audience.
November 23, 2018 at 8:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pepper Mill Rondo: A.T.M. tape
Where to even start with this one. This is 100 minutes of Good Willsmith’s Doug and Max collating the entire contents of the internet and spewing it out in jagged, irregularly shaped chunks. A long time ago, there was this website someone told me about that I posted a link to in the Secret Stash section of Foxy Digitalis, that was called something like “Neverending Glitch,” and was something along those lines, somehow harnessing all the websites and live streams and feeds and everything else online and producing a mutated ever-shifting audio-visual glob of everything. I assume it’s long gone, I had it bookmarked once but I assume I got rid of it when the site wasn’t active anymore, but it would make a perfect accompaniment to listening to this tape. It’s an overwhelmingly intense barrage of media soundbites, shreds of everything on the radio or on TV, and lots of drunken karaoke sessions, all supremely glitched and splattered. It’s not entirely random, however. “I’m Sitting In A Room” reconstructs the text of Alvin Lucier’s legendary avant-garde piece using lyrics from pop songs. Some collages focus on specific genres (“I’m A Guy That Makes Classical Music Collages” is self-explanatory, “Pepperoni Stick Is Bout 2 Breakup” regurgitates nu-metal). “Lesser Artists Borrow, Great Artists Vape” is a painstaking, mind-numbing montage of rapidfire references to all things aesthetic,
Eccojams,
Floral Shoppe, and vape pens. “NO MORE FAN MAIL” steamrollers over the Beatles, and “Subscribe or Die” mines videos from Patreon pages, boiling the internet down to a bunch of loud voices begging for your money. Describing something as “everything” is such an over-used cliche, but in this case, not doing so would be selling it short. Doug’s glorious solo effort
These Magical Numbers, consisting entirely of YouTubed renditions of the national anthem played at the same time, was American patriotism at its most purely obnoxious blown up into a harsh noise wall.
E.D.M. (here standing for “Ecstatic Dissonant Mashup”) is another logic-obliterating reflection of our current times. Totally essential.
November 23, 2018 at 5:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Colin Potter: The Where House? 2XLP
This is a deluxe reissue of one of the many cassettes Colin Potter released during the early ’80s, long before he became a major contributor to Nurse With Wound. Recorded entirely in his home studio, every song feels like it was recorded in a different part of the house, and all of the furniture, books, artifacts, mice, and even ghosts can somehow be heard in these songs. The first side alone switches from lo-fi avant-pop to ghostly drone to racing minimal synth to drugged-out, pitched-down creepiness (apparently involving a “secret police interrogation”). On the second side, “Later, That Same Night” is extremely trippy proto-techno with layers of backward sounds, a rotund bass line, and blazing guitars. “Ssroi’asitjk” sounds like the same track backwards, making it unclear which direction is which. “Leer” continues with the backwards escapades, this time in a speedy waltz tempo. “Jackpot” is also fast and playful, but also kind of off-balance and a bit sinister. Then there’s more than a side’s worth of bonus tracks, mostly recorded after the main album, and they similarly range from haunted soundscapes to entrancing loop explorations. While all of this maintains its homemade quality, the remastering job here is absolutely phenomenal, and it sounds way cleaner than its creator possibly could’ve imagined. Not a tiny bit of tape hiss, and a full, detailed mix. Another essential Dark Entries release.
November 23, 2018 at 3:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
XOR: Conic Sections LP
Commissioned for an exhibit in Miami’s ArtCenter South Florida, this album by Heinrich Mueller (Drexciya, Dopplereffekt) is a continuous work made up of weightless synth sequences and detached melodies. It’s every bit as scientific and clinical as Mueller’s post-Drexciya work has been, but there’s still human sentiments behind the sparkling melodies of pieces like “Ellipse”. It definitely nails a feeling of being trapped in space and longing for any type of connection to anyone, but not in an overbearingly gloomy way. This isn’t as immediate as his most well-known work, but it does reveal itself the more you listen, and of course it’s essential if you’re like me and you need to own everything he and/or James Stinson have ever released.
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