The Answer Is In The Beat

Phal:Angst: Phase IV (Bloodshed666, 2018)

September 21, 2018 at 6:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Austrian group Phal:Angst are somewhere in between industrial and post-rock, constructing 10-minute epics filled with gritty guitars, creeping tempos, and cinematic overtones. The film dialogue samples strewn throughout tracks like opener “On the Run” bring to mind older Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but this group generally sticks to evenly paced electronic tempos rather than lengthy crescendos. They also alternate the samples with original vocals, which are sinister and sometimes menacing, but not overly aggressive. The music itself similarly never gets into aggro overdrive; rather, it maintains a consistent mood while evolving through different atmospheric elements, incorporating instruments such as harp and metallophone along with the guitars and electronics. “Despair II” is somewhat appropriately the most emotionally devastating track, as well as the longest. This feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness is further expanded upon with “They Won’t Have to Burn the Books When Noone Reads Them Anyway”. The album ends with 2 significantly shorter remixes, the first from Will Brooks (Dälek), and the second from Justin Broadrick. Both keep within the mood of the originals, but Broadrick’s mix adds a bit more bass pressure.

Deadbeat Beat: Tree, Grass & Stone 7″ (Crystal Palace, 2018)

September 21, 2018 at 4:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The latest single from Detroit rough riders Deadbeat Beat alludes to Swedish psych legends Träd, Gräs Och Stenar. As natural-sounding as its title, the song is a steady, upbeat trip, starting out with a bit of a sunshine chorus and verse before dissolving into spacey synth effects. In the spirit of numerous James Brown and P-Funk singles, the jam continues on the second side, rematerializing and fading in on a shredding astral-exploration guitar solo. Equal parts pop and psych, the record makes equal room for hooks and blissful zone-outs. Digitally available on Bandcamp.

The Burrell Connection: Hyper/Orbit 12″ EP (Craigie Knowes, 2018)

September 15, 2018 at 2:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest Burrell Connection EP starts out with crunchy broken beats, “Clear” sweeps, and an acid line snaking through everything on “Hyper 14.255”. Then “Hyper 480” starts out riding the line between atmospheric jungle and techno before some impossibly heavy breaks smash in. It all ends way too soon. “Orbit 458” is a slower, bleaker atmospheric breakbeat track with the “fuckin’ voodoo magic man” sample as made famous by Hyper On Experience’s “Lords Of the Null Lines”. “Orbit .512” is a much more hypnotic midtempo shaker with a sly acid line sparking up throughout. It somehow feels caught between dubby disco, gqom, and some sort of shamanic trance. A very well rounded, often marvelous set of tracks.

Mamuthones: Fear On The Corner (Rocket Recordings, 2018)

September 11, 2018 at 11:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Nearly a decade ago, I reviewed a Mamuthones album for Foxy Digitalis (R.I.P.) which was sort of a droney dark ambient work filled with clattering metal and creepy voices. I lost track of the group after that, but sometime in between then and now, the Italian group started making colorful psychedelic rock, informed by both Krautrock and Afrobeat, and they signed to Rocket Recordings. Rhythm is the focus here, and there’s pounding drums as well as marimba and other percussive instruments adding some additional flavors. There’s some noise bursts and plenty of flanged guitar effects, but the group largely don’t drown out the rhythm. “Show Me” is probably the most overtly Krautrock-sounding song, but “Alone” is a straight-up disco-punk jam. The album ends with “Here We Are”, a trance-inducing 10-minute procession which is roughly as frightening as the album’s cover art.

Fritz Welch: A Desire To Push Forward Without Gaining Access To Anything LP (Radical Documents, 2018)

September 11, 2018 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Former Peeesseye member Fritz Welch presents an album of totally off-the-wall vocal pieces. Double-tracking and processing his voice, he starts out speaking normal words but quickly goes off the rails into elastic-faced jibber-jabber and primal gobbledygook. The fact that there’s two of him making these alien cartoon noises only increases the nuttiness of it all. I’m not an expert on dadaist sound poetry so I have no clue who to compare this to — other than weird voices I come up with when I think nobody’s around. He breaks slightly from the madness with the brief “Tamio’s Prison Song”, a listing of several prisons described as “a poetic response to a song often performed by Tamio Shiraishi”. The second side is my favorite of the two, because his voice is aided by electronics, so he’s grunting and shouting into the void, and then his voice comes back to haunt him. Definitely recommended for fans of the vocal stylings of Dylan Nyoukis and Aaron Dilloway. Listen and buy from Bandcamp, if you dare.

Body Shame: Open Sores tape (SDM Records, 2017)

September 8, 2018 at 9:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Usually the term body shame refers to making fun of someone for being overweight, but in this artist’s case, it seems more like being ashamed that one inhabits a body, and wanting to transcend it or break free from it, no matter the damage. This is rambunctious, barely controlled percussive chaos with clattering drums completely broken free from any conventional rhythmic grid patterns and lava-like bursts of squelching synths. Some of it feels like an attempt to play doom metal entirely on a card table full of busted electronic equipment and dilapidated drums, yet all of these inanimate objects have lives of their own and keep scurrying across the room and doing things they’re not supposed to. It can be hard to grasp what the artist is trying to accomplish here, even after multiple listens, but there’s obviously a lot of thought put into this, and it feels like an intense self-examination as well as a deafening cry out from within. There’s nothing pretty or tame about any of this, it’s messy, destructive, chaotic, and incredibly challenging. It’s also highly exhilarating, a life-affirming body rush. For fans of Scissor Shock, Five Star Hotel, Nero’s Day At Disneyland. Available from Bandcamp.

Christian Rønn & Ikue Mori: Chordis Et Machina LP (Resipiscent/Nische/Tonometer, 2018)

September 3, 2018 at 9:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This is a delightful collection of improvised spluttery noises, knocks, electro-acoustic sorcery, and the types of electronic buzzing that make you think the arm of the turntable is skating across the record, but it’s not. Ikue Mori is just credited with “electronics”, but Christian Rønn plays upright piano, prepared grand piano soundboard, FX, and Buchla and Serge synthesizers. There’s some sparse moments, but other times you need to listen several times in order to get an idea of everything going on. It sounds very random and sometimes accidental/by chance, and that could all be a turn-off for some listeners, but for me, the way they venture into the unknown sounds utterly exciting. The clipped pianos which rumble throughout “Loch Ness” add some eeriness, but still in sort of a sideways, refracted through broken prisms kind of way. “Primordial Chaos” is more piano-heavy, coming closer to a glitch-enhanced Conlon Nancarrow player piano study. “The Path” is maybe the most abduction-like piece. Really fun album, and I’m sure it was a total blast to create as well.