The Answer Is In The Beat

Kate Gentile: Find Letter X (Pi Recordings, 2023)

October 21, 2023 at 5:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Drummer and composer Kate Gentile’s newest opus contains three CDs, each over an hour long, and each is a dense, complex world of its own interconnected with the wider universe of the other discs. The other players are saxophonist/clarinettist Jeremy Viner, synth and keyboard player Matt Mitchell, and bassist Kim Cass. The electronic parts get a lot of short, sizzling, piercing interludes to themselves, like the very first track of the first disc. “Laugh Magic” is dense mathcore jazz that constantly switches time signatures, and already at this point in the album, all bets are off, there’s no telling what’s in store. The band navigate through corkscrew rhythms and more straightforward parts, sometimes overlapping or criss-crossing, and to me it all sounds perfectly composed and arranged and executed, not random or intentionally difficult. It’s hard to even pick out standout moments, because it really does feel like the whole album is meant to be taken as a singular journey. The press release says the album was inspired by the third season of Twin Peaks, and how it has an extremely complex story line and abstract logic of its own, and even though there isn’t a narrative connecting the pieces on this album, it’s similar in how it just completely subverts expectations and goes in its own directions and doesn’t wait for you to catch up with it. Some parts do deserve mention though, like the manic prog-metal-jazz of disc 2 opener “R.A.T.B.O.T.B”. Really the whole second disc keeps up that intensity, with tracks like “Garbage Juice” adding more synth chaos. “Importunate Babble” piles all the elements up into one of the album’s most intense, overwhelming compositions. Disc 3 opens with the 10-minute monster “Psychoradiant”, and cools down somewhat for a few moments, with a bit more emphasis on piano, but still with fast, rapidly evolving rhythms. “Spectrescope” seems to start with mellower tones and a more spacious approach but it gets worked up and knotty by the end. Then “Quantum Exits” is a 13 minute tour de force, but the much shorter “Epitome” which follows is a more concentrated burst of energy and color. Crazily enough, this isn’t even the most massive thing Gentile and Mitchell have created — they released a 6 CD set titled Snark Horse two years ago. After listening to Find Letter X a few times, I think I’m almost ready for that one.

Conflict at Serenity Pools: Ladders of Misfortune (self-released, 2023)

October 15, 2023 at 11:58 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Conflict at Serenity Pools’ already robust self-released discography has generally dipped into psychedelic indie electronic and ambient house waters, but their newest album has the most straightforward alternative pop songs they’ve written so far. Simple, hooky indie pop with hushed vocals and some reverb effects but nothing really approaching the realm of shoegaze. “Jasmine” is a bit longer (almost 5 minutes) and has a sort of motorik rhythm, but it’s still poppy. “Saying Goodbye” is short, wistful, and folky, and a delay-heavy a cappella cover of “Nature Boy” provides the album’s most haunting moment.

Patrick Elkins: Fruits of the Spirit (We’re Twins, 2006/Editions JAV, 2023)

October 14, 2023 at 2:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Ypsilanti weirdo folk legend Patrick Elkins released this album on We’re Twins Records in 2006, right before the label shut down. It was the label’s only professionally pressed CD rather than a CD-R, and 500 copies were pressed, but most of them just sat in a closet for years. Label founder Jason Voss has now started a new label, Editions JAV, and is returning the remaining copies to circulation. Recorded and produced by Fred Thomas, it’s closer to noisy garage-pop than folk, with lots of distorted guitars, dubby effects, melodica, drum machines, and a general electrified atmosphere. The songs are usually short and fragmentary, though “Tornado Belt” is a more dramatic string-laden ballad, and “Fruit of the Spirits” is sort of entranced drone-folk with plenty of moaning and warped effects. “Fallout” is 38 seconds of throat-shredding punk screaming, but not at punk tempo. “I’ll Be Your Celibate Monk” is one of the weirder, more unpredictable moments, and “Fever on the Inside” is a drum-heavy caveman rock pounder that sounds as unhinged as anything on 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts. Finally, “Suicide Muffins” is a grand entry into the canon of upbeat songs with dark, even morbid lyrics, but it’s tossed off gleefully in about a minute.

Celestaphone: Paper Cut From the Obit (Drumhex, 2023)

October 8, 2023 at 6:09 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Celestaphone’s music stretches past the boundaries of hip-hop, to the point where his latest basically ends up feeling like a prog-rock album with a heavy jazz-funk influence. Playful pianos, elastic grooves, and morphing, thought bubble-like keyboard blips detail the vivid sound beds for terminally online word salad. The tracks often flow into each other, creating surprising beat switches and genre dovetails, like the BBQ/pool party-ready funk near-instrumental “Day”, while some of the lyrics (including a Mac Dre reference early on) and Celestaphone’s flows clearly mark out his lineage in the pantheon of West Coast hip-hop. Still, the music is gleeful jazz-prog and even post-punk rather than G-funk. The knotty synth-funk instrumental “Nay” dissolves into the woozy scientific terror-dream “Paintings of Panspermia”, and tucked away near the end of the album is one of the hardest Moor Mother verses I’ve ever heard (on a track with Armand Hammer, no less), and an entire song where Paul Barman bursts with joy about how much he loves babies. A really surprising and fun LP where sarcasm bleeds into celebration as we’re taken on a ride down a twisting, non-obvious path.

Martes martes: Dragon cat fox cat scn (Expanded Edition) (Editions JAV, 2023)

October 1, 2023 at 3:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Martes martes was a solo project of former WCBN DJ Jeffrey Nolan Carey during the 2000s. This CD contains an album he released on Jib Kidder’s short-lived Capt Bass label, plus an EP on another long-gone imprint, Burning Tongue Records. Carey plays a lot of delicate acoustic instruments, and even toys, including harp, dulcimer, recorders, French horn, and more, as well as samples and Mario Paint. It’s very delicate and homemade, not unlike Frank Pahl’s music and films, or the fragmentary folk of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. There’s also a significant new age influence here, but the earlier private press weirdo kind, not the commercialized health food store and spa kind. It’s all playful and curious, and “miniature” enough to appeal to fans of strange experimental indie stuff, yet it feels too well-crafted to tag it as “lo-fi”. Drum machines, clapping, piping woodwinds, and sophisticated guitar plucking collide on the gleeful march “Pine Marten Traveling Song”. Other songs make nice music for playing in the forest during autumn. “A Ydych Chi Wedi Gweld Bele’r Coed Yn Eryn” takes things in a different direction, with mbira melodies and eerie whirring. “Martens at Night” is a lovely string-heavy piece, and the string quartet version of “Autumn Walking Song” (track 14) is also in this vein. “Foggy Morning” starts bleary and then wakes up with a barrage of ringing alarm samples. Curiously, the CD ends with hissing and beating sounds of a lung machine.

Setting: Shone a Rainbow Light (Paradise of Bachelors, 2023)

September 30, 2023 at 3:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Jaime Fennelly’s Mind Over Mirrors project increasingly went in a cosmic Americana direction with its last few albums, and here the harmonium/synth master teams up with Black Twig Pickers’ Nathan Bowles and drummer Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone, many other projects). Setting’s debut album starts with “We Center”, a magnificently zoned-out piece more on the Krautrock/raga end of things. Then “Zoetropics” mixes harmonium drifting with choppy rhythms and banjo, making me think of Penguin Cafe but also going somewhere they wouldn’t dare. “A Sun Harp” is more of an Alice Coltrane-esque spiritual jazz excursion, with hypnotic zither and piano working splendidly against rapidly tumbling drums and washes of synths and strings. “Fog Glossaries” is a much more melancholy, rolling procession with tolling bells and eventually drums that sound like a train rumbling by. All four tracks are very different, and they’re all pretty fantastic, so it seems like this project could go in any number of directions from here.