I received a review copy of this tape a few months ago, and soon after I drove to Chicago to see Autechre and I found a copy of this tape at one of the two branches of Reckless Records that I visited. Turns out that Patrick Cosmos is from Chicago, so it’s not that much of a coincidence, but the chance of across two copies of a non-local tape that’s limited to less than 100 copies is usually pretty slim. Anyway, the name Kendal Mintcake somehow made me expect some sort of Elephant 6 knockoff band, but instead it’s solo synth stuff. There’s definitely something bright green (but not Emeralds-y) about his work. It moves slowly and there’s a cloudy haze to it, but there’s also pretty upfront, pronounced exploratory melodies. It ends with a curious feedback wave loop. The Patrick Cosmos side is immediately more amped-up, noisy, droney, and melodic, as well as having some weird grinding texture underneath. This side is one long cosmic dream, while the other side is four shorter (but inter-connected) parts. Probably still available at Reckless Records, but if you’re not in Chicago, there’s always Bandcamp.
Umor Rex has been unearthing quality oddities for a while now. Without looking too far into the backstory of this one (except to see that they put out an album on Dekorder a few years ago), this is top-notch Krautrocky minimal electronic stuff. It starts out a bit nebulous, but then it settles into Berlin-school arpeggios and eventually there’s trippy beats and seagull-like clarinet. The beats are usually pretty light and unobtrusive, but they’re as steady as the calm, percolating rhythms. The 15-minute “Belegte Welt” has the strongest pulse and the most adventurous guitars and ping-ponging, almost 8-bit-sounding synths. All of this is swell, it definitely evokes the Krautrock sound without sounding retro or directly copying anyone.
Glacially slow-moving sustain-heavy ambient piano melodies which flare up into soft yet dark static drone. Definitely a brittle, homemade feel to these recordings, especially the decaying tape manipulation. Very personal and intimate. On a few tracks, folky vocals call out under the piano haze, but they seem like they’re trapped in some sort of ember. Very subtle effects added to the piano, sometimes a few notes here and there seem to be playing backwards. Seems really basic and simple in some ways, but there really is a great deal of care put into the craft of these songs. Has some similar ideas/moods in common with Ian William Craig, the last Grouper album, or any number of current piano-based artists (Nils Frahm, Max Richter, etc.) but still clearly using its own techniques. “Guide” is maybe the most upfront lovely/sad piano melody. “Shelter” ups the static/hiss content considerably, although it fades away after a couple minutes, leaving eerie backwards loops. Then the hiss returns with more layers of snowflake-like pianotes (I meant to type “piano notes” but somehow I squished those two words into one and it fits somehow) along with sunken vocals. “Restoration” is another sort of underwater lullaby with delicate guitar notes joining the shifting pianos. Crickets join “Beams”, and the pianos feel like a single star shining incredibly bright in a sky under a field in the middle of a dark forest. The CD-r appears to be sold out, but there’s always Bandcamp for all your digital needs.
Room40 debut by an Australian experimental artist who has done numerous installations and exhibits throughout Australia. A pretty wide variety of different works for homemade instruments and cracked electronics. “Led Vert” starts out as scanner-like drone and then layers on some flittering, buzzing electronics, sounding a little bit like a more smoothed out, less noisy version of some of Aaron Dilloway’s works. “Sinew and Cats” is grounded in a slightly more aggressive buzz, with a bit more sour, piercing sounds weaving in and out. “%” seems to be a field recording of a bunch of noisy homemade contraptions. Apparently he’s using an electric fan and connecting it to a bunch of small objects with a rope, so it has a constant fluttering rhythm which triggers incidental melodies. “Expand Scatter” is closer to the first 2 pieces, but a bit more of a wider range, going through heavier noise/static passages to more chiming ones, with lots of signal interruptions. “Silhouettes” is the longest piece at nearly 10 minutes, and it balances an uneasy drone with all sorts of bizarre mechanical sounds. Sounds like a lot of household machines going haywire, maybe some evil elves ransacking the studio when the composer’s not around. It’s actually pretty warped and trippy.
Second solo LP from a former member of Bassholes, Gibson Bros, and a bunch of other bands. Really distorted, trebly lo-fi rock that seems to have some sort of country blues influence but mostly just sounds like noisy lo-fi rock. Lots of reverb on the vocals, but they’re still way behind the guitar (and so are the drums/drum machine, and keyboards). Very difficult to discern the lyrics. I’m guessing they’re probably not very happy, based on the titles. Reminds me of Country Teasers/The Rebel, even though it doesn’t sound like them/him (actually “Never Win” kinda does), but if you’re into grouchy, noisy lo-fi rock like that, this could be of interest to you. “Watch You Go” has more of a stomp to it than other tracks. More than anything I just really like the album’s title, and the music fits pretty well. If you can identify with this type of fuck-everything racket, it’s up on Bandcamp.
Hour 1
3:02 am Fis ~ “Happy Alone” ~ The Blue Quicksand Is Going Now (new) ~ Loopy ~ 2015
3:05 am Fis ~ “DMT Usher” ~ Preparations ~ Tri Angle ~ 2013
3:10 am Boards of Canada ~ “June 9th” ~ Hi Scores ~ Skam ~ 1996
3:15 am Special Request ~ “Amnesia” ~ Modern Warfare EP 1 (new) ~ XL ~ 2015
3:22 am Funkstörung featuring Adi ~ “Who is Who?” ~ Funkstörung (new) ~ Monkeytown ~ 2015
3:25 am Abra ~ “Roses” ~ Rose (new) ~ Awful Records ~ 2015
3:29 am Kelela ~ “Send Me Out” ~ Cut 4 Me ~ Fade to Mind ~ 2013
3:33 am Deuter ~ “Mericoeur” ~ Illumination of the Heart (new) ~ New Earth Records ~ 2015
3:37 am Broadcast ~ “Papercuts” ~ The Noise Made By People ~ Warp ~ 2000
3:41 am Die Wilde Jagd ~ “Der Elektrische Reiter” ~ Die Wilde Jagd (new) ~ Bureau B ~ 2015
3:48 am Prairie ~ “A Demon Will Hurt You” ~ Like a Pack of Hounds ~ Shitkatapult ~ 2015
3:54 am Ruhe ~ “Guide” ~ Patriarchs (new) ~ Eilean Rec. ~ 2015
3:59 am Oneohtrix Point Never ~ “Lift” ~ Garden of Delete (new) ~ Warp ~ 2015 Hour 2
4:03 am Savant ~ “The Shining Hour” ~ Artificial Dance ~ Rvng Intl. ~ 1983
4:07 am Kode9 ~ “Wu Wei” ~ Nothing (new) ~ Hyperdub ~ 2015
4:10 am Jam City ~ “Proud” ~ Dream a Garden ~ Night Slugs ~ 2015
4:15 am Egyptrixx feat. Nyssa ~ “Body II Body” ~ Transfer of Energy [Feelings of Power] ~ Halocline Trance ~ 2015
4:23 am Ross Manning ~ “Led Vert” ~ Interlacing (new) ~ Room40 ~ 2015
4:29 am Kitaro ~ “Aura” ~ Tenku ~ Domo ~ 1986
4:35 am Wapassou ~ “Rien” ~ Wapassou ~ Lion Productions ~ 1974
4:45 am Sarah Davachi ~ “Live Session (Excerpt)” ~ CJSW 90.9 FM Level Up (new) ~ CJSW ~ 2015
4:56 am The Fall ~ “First One Today” ~ Sub-Lingual Tablet ~ Cherry Red ~ 2015
4:58 am W-X ~ “Moment” ~ W-X (new) ~ Castle Face ~ 2015 Hour 3
5:03 am SK Kakraba ~ “Banyere Yo” ~ Songs of Paapieye (new) ~ Awesome Tapes From Africa ~ 2015
5:12 am Arca ~ “Soichiro” ~ Mutant (new) ~ Mute ~ 2015
5:16 am Laurel Halo ~ “Shake” ~ In Situ (new) ~ Honest Jon’s ~ 2015
5:21 am Bang On A Can All-Stars/Tyondai Braxton ~ “Casino Trem” ~ Field Recordings (new) ~ Cantaloupe Music ~ 2015
5:28 am Ray Lynch ~ “Drifted in a Deeper Land” ~ No Blue Thing ~ Ray Lynch Productins ~ 1989
5:34 am yuk. ~ “aftern()()n” ~ a n a k (new) ~ Leaving Records ~ 2015
5:36 am Express Rising ~ “Sycamore” ~ Fixed Rope (new) ~ Numero Group ~ 2015
5:40 am CFCF ~ “Melting the Ice” ~ The Colours of Life (new) ~ 1080p ~ 2015
5:44 am Young Galaxy ~ “Wear Out the Ground” ~ Falsework (new) ~ Paper Bag ~ 2015
5:48 am The Orb ~ “Alpine Dawn” ~ Pop Ambient 2016 (new) ~ Kompakt ~ 2015
5:54 am Jaki Liebezeit & Holger Mertin ~ “Jackpool” ~ Akşak ~ Staubgold ~ 2015
LDP take their longform lunar modular/analog explorations to Hausu Mountain on one of their most recent tapes (it’s hard to keep track of this prolific group sometimes). The two sidelong space probes take a while to unfold (in typical LDP fashion), but eventually sputtering beats vibrate into vast unending space while everything shimmers and reflects dust. Second side “Eardian Mana” is more varied and twitchy, sometimes verging on malfunctioning or overheating, but it’s all controlled and eventually it edges back to the steady, slowly evolving rhythm. Just wait for that end sequence. Available on Bandcamp.
It’s officially end of year list season, so (for music geeks like me) it’s time to frantically find music that came out this year that I missed. If you’re in a similar mindset, this is an album you shouldn’t overlook if you’re into strange, dark, unpredictable music. I’m digging through mountains of promo CDs from my job (long story) and this one ended up in my possession, and I put it on without any expectations and was floored. It starts out as dark, broken drone with field recordings, then goes through intense, decaying guitar loops and backwards textures, ending up with some murder folk and shredded guitar noise. This CD also includes the entirety of Prairie’s earlier EP titled I’m So In Love I Almost Forgot I Survived A Disaster. A lot of that EP sounds like Fuck Buttons, but it’s way better, partially because Fuck Buttons is such a terrible band name. Seriously though, Prairie is doing some pretty incredible dark ambient noise folk and shouldn’t be overlooked.
This Nashville-based group has collaborated extensively with the Flaming Lips, but this is the first I’ve heard of their music. Of course, this band’s music is trippy, but it’s also harsh and noisy and violent and schizophrenic. It alternates between sweet and fragile, and thrashy and noisy, echoing some Digital Hardcore bands as well as early Crystal Castles. I missed this group when they played in Detroit this past weekend (I wanted to go, Warren Defever was opening!) and I can only assume they had trouble fitting all their synths on the tiny PJ’s Lager House stage. The synths are always buzzing and on the verge of malfunctioning, and sometimes the beats or rhythms seem off balance. There’s all sorts of rhythmic explosions and glitches, and some of the vocals sound vulnerable and scared. Some of it gets pretty unhinged. There’s some heavy Krautrock-like rhythms, and at one point there’s strange gospel-ish vocals floating around in space. Very unpredictable, bewildering album. Also, like Hit to Death in the Future Head, it ends with at least half an hour of some hard-panned repetitive noise that nobody needs to listen to all the way through. Other than this loop, you can hear/buy the album at Bandcamp.
The Answer Is In The Beat 