The Answer Is In The Beat

Tang Soleil: Outboard Sensory Meridian Response LP (Dusty Medical Records, 2015)

November 4, 2015 at 11:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Really bizarre, fun acid-fried rock’n’roll from Montreal. The vocals are always mangled by effects, at times sounding like Longmont Potion Castle produced the album. The band loves exploring the possibilities of the recording studio, banging out wild psych-rock riffs and then abruptly shifting (Mothers-style) to whispering voices, spoken word interludes, and revving motorcycle sounds. The songs are generally short and transition into other ones without warning, making each side of the record sound like a suite rather than a collection of individual songs. It’s kind of a “what was THAT?” record, but not in an offputting way. Kind of reminds me of a young Flaming Lips, but if they just kept to making 2 minute psych-pop songs with standard rock instruments and blown-out effects. Really warped and nutty, with splattering guitar sounds and goofy voices, but there’s also a bit of a reverence to the silly side of ’50s and ’60s rock and roll, with references to “Purple People Eater” and “Woolly Bully”. The album is short and packs a weird, squishy punch, and that does it a world of good.

Tyvek: Blunt Instrumental 3 tape (Doubles Tapes, 2015)

November 3, 2015 at 7:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Tyvek haven’t released a proper album since 2012’s well-received On Triple Beams; since then, they’ve sporadically issued limited cassettes of practices and live gigs. This is the first Tyvek release in many years to feature WCBN’s own Shelley Salant (Shells, Rebel Kind, a billion other bands/projects). On the first side, she and Kevin Boyer plug away on some repetitive, meditative improvs for guitar, drums, and bass, and it actually quite resembles Shells more than Tyvek, especially considering how Boyer’s voice is kind of shunted into a corner for only a few moments near the end of the side. The second side is more Tyvek-y, with razor-sharp guitar riffage and bleeding treble-bass surrounding Boyer’s lyrics about city dreaming, free states, and past futures. The electrified stomp-throb of “Shattered Channels” is the easy highlight.

Mike Dehnert/Roman Lindau/Sascha Rydell: 8 Years Fachwerk 2LP (Fachwerk, 2015)

November 1, 2015 at 1:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The three artists of the Berlin-based Fachwerk label come together for this cohesive compilation, which is threaded together by short interludes filled with conversations and murmurings. The tracks range from dubby and minimal to more playful and wonky, with Mike Dehnert’s “Beiwerk” recalling Luciano at his harshest/trippiest, and easily being the standout track of the album. Sascha Rydell’s tracks have a more calm, reflective aura than the other artists’, but they still have driving beats along with the swirling, dubby synths. Mike Dehnert’s “Rewerk” is another storming epic.

Dreamcrusher: Hackers All of Them Hackers tape (Fire Talk, 2015)

November 1, 2015 at 12:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dreamcrusher continues to be one of the most intense artists on the planet with his newest EP. There’s just nobody else who combines scorching, electrified noise with beats the way this guy does. It’s just unreal how powerful his music is. And on this one, he adds a greater presence of vocals, even if they’re buried and hard to make out. Even still, they clearly express lost, confused, empty, shut-out emotions. Tracks like “Adore” come closer to realizing the sort of noise-rave sound he’s been going for. Pulverizing.

Thore Pfeiffer: Im Blickfield (Kompakt Pop Ambient, 2015)

November 1, 2015 at 12:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This one almost passed me by this year, but I’m glad I got a copy before the year ended because it’s pretty astonishing. I’m seriously glad that Kompakt decided to start a series of Pop Ambient artist albums this year, as the compilation series is reliably excellent, and the label’s more ambient-leaning releases are usually the best things on the label. This album’s looping ambient pieces are understated but still kind of surreal and trippy. There’s something cut-up and sophisticated about it, but it’s still relaxed and soothing. He seems to utilize a lot of strange electro-acoustic textures, but packaged into accessible, shimmering pieces which are easy to get into. Simply stunning, one of the year’s best ambient albums.

Esmerine: Lost Voices (Constellation, 2015)

October 24, 2015 at 4:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Esmerine are one of many bands associated with the Montreal community of musicians which include post-rock groups such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, and they are especially noted for emphasizing strings (cello and violin) and mallet percussion instruments (such as marimba and vibraphone) over guitars. Their usage of instruments such as sarod, darbuka, and riq give their music an air of otherworldly mystique, but it still has a directness and familiarity to it. Songs such as “A River Runs Through This City” have upfront, snapping drum beats and clear, chiming melodies. “19/14” plays with the tricky time signature implied by its title, but the way it incorporates its melody into the steadily growing waves of sound proves to be enrapturing rather than difficult. “My Mamma Pinned a Rose on Me” is a sublime sea of marimba and strings which sets the tone for the exotic-sounding “Funambule (Deux Pas De Serein)”, which elevates to the most intense crescendo on the album. The album’s last two pieces are shorter and more peaceful, concluding with the graceful “Lullaby For Nola”. A seriously lovely album, full of suspense and wonder.

Doug Hream Blunt: My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt (Luaka Bop, 2015)

October 21, 2015 at 11:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Once again, Luaka Bop unearths a record collector phenomenon/cult classic and gives it a widespread release, hopefully spreading the legend in question even further. Doug Hream Blunt is a San Francisco-based musician who started making music in the ’80s and eventually pressed 2 12″ records which sat in the “local” bins around San Francisco’s record stores, and eventually became discovered by music geeks and made its way to WFMU and other sources for strange, offbeat music. His shining moment is (and will always be) the astonishing outsider soul masterpiece “Gentle Persuasion”, which is entirely the type of song that completely stops you in your tracks the first time you hear it. All I have to say is, you will never hear the word “butt” the same way after you hear this song. I’ve listened to this song more times than I can count (I actually found an original copy of the record when I was in Austin once) and it never, ever gets old. Other than that, there’s the groovy “Fly Guy” (which also ends the album in an instrumental version which replaces the lyrics with loads of flutey synth soloing, unless it’s actually a really bizarre guitar sound, it’s hard to tell) and a lot of songs which, well, sound similar to the other songs but with different lyrics. The liner notes say that some of the songs even have the same backing tracks. They all tend to be around 5 or 6 minutes long and feature rhythms which are almost Krautrock-like in their hypnotic repetition. The songs all have very straightforward lyrics and copious amounts of guitar soloing. Sultry duet “Caribbean Queen” has nothing to do with the Billy Ocean hit of the same name (for all we know, it could’ve been recorded first). “Big Top” is one of of a few songs with cheery, circus-like melodies. It’s impossible to tell when these songs were recorded (even the artist doesn’t seem to know for sure) and some of them are pretty rough sounding, especially “Big Top” and “Trek”, but it all just lends to the off-the-cuff charm. “Gentle Persuasion” remains the smash hit, but if that song strikes a chord with you, you’ll want to hear the entire thing.