Who knows if the Boredoms will ever release new music, but this 7″ finds Eye fronting a Boredoms-influenced duo called Gagakirise. On “The Flash”, his vocals are alternately operatic and shrieking, and the music is anthemic, spacey, and destructive. It’s great fun. “Robobird2″ is very minimal and quiet for a minute and a half until it explodes with furious drum rolling and bursting, flaming guitars, as well as Eye’s wailing vocals. Lots of ideas packed into this short 7”, hopefully this is just a preview of something big to come later.
Spacey electronic pop created on hardware. Lots of elements of analog synth noise drone stuff, but turned into pop songs. Some of it’s kind of like Peaking Lights, but not quite as dubby (a little bit, but not a lot). The second side amps up the dance beats, with “NTHE” and “Unwound” sounding like something that could be cleaned up and released on DFA, but then it wouldn’t sound as good. The last two tracks are instrumental and zone out a bit more. Could be a name to watch. Name-your-price DL on Bandcamp.
Charles Barabé / Jean-Sébastien Truchy: Les Confessions II / Souvenirs Rompus, Oubliés Ou Ma Vie Réinventée split tape
Last year, Quebec composer Charles Barabé released “Insultes (hommage à John Cage)”, the most flat-out hilarious recording of the year, which set a computer voice reading negative YouTube comments about a performance of 4’33” to clattering, noisy drone. This tape is the first work I’ve heard by Barabé other than that piece, and it’s equally stunning for entirely different reasons. “Les Confessions II” is a dense, bracing, busy collage of street sounds (clunking footsteps, traffic, chattering) with saxophone flutters, modular synth noise, and later some guitar layers and I think a Fleetwood Mac “Albatross” sample. The modular passages are sizzling, messy, and brain-warping, and the way everything else is mixed creates such an overcrowding, all-encompassing effect. It is just simply astonishing. I haven’t heard Truchy before, and his side has a similar city-voyager type feel, although it’s not quite as dense or noisy surrealist. Lots of field recordings of public transit rides, and much more of a minimalist, spacious feel. It does eventually get into some eerie synth droning, and then some more piercing, rumbling, noisy tones. Then we get into a ring modulated trip accompanied by close-miked whispering in French, and then eventually landing into some nature sounds. A pretty interesting audio journey, but not as incredible as the Barabé side.
A strange, short interstellar voyage from Pittsburgh. Vividly cascading synths and broken, sputtering noise erupting at unexpected moments. There’s a trace of an other-galaxy dub influence, and a vaguely rasta-sounding female voice pops up a few times, only to be interrupted or diced up. A slight crunch of doomy guitar emerges on the second site. Some absolutely shredding delay on this tape. It all comes back to that cascading, quazared-out synth sound, making some place so alien sound so familiar. Available on Bandcamp.
Mic break music = Earth/Vessel: self-titled tape on White_Reeves Productions Hour 1
3:01 am Black Wing ~ “Death Sentences” ~ Is Doomed ~ The Flenser ~ 2015
3:07 am John Carpenter ~ “Night (Zola Jesus & Dean Hurley Remix)” ~ Lost Themes Remixed ~ Sacred Bones ~ 2015
3:11 am Oneirogen ~ “Collapsing” ~ Plenitude ~ Denovali ~ 2015
3:21 am Deafheaven ~ “Come Back” ~ New Bermuda ~ Anti- ~ 2015
3:30 am Crowhurst and Intestinal Disgorge ~ “Bouquet of Gore” ~ The Devil’s Experiment ~ Bandcamp ~ 2015
3:32 am Gavin Gamboa ~ “Rain Dance” ~ Take Me To That Place Where I Know Nothing ~ Bandcamp ~ 2015
3:34 am Khaki Blazer ~ “Vibrato Rap” ~ Moontan Nocturnal ~ Hausu Mountain ~ 2015
3:36 am Mute-Tiny ~ “Baby Baby” ~ Resistance ~ Seagrave ~ 2015
3:42 am Grischa Lichtenberger ~ “cl vb 2_v2” ~ La Demeure; Il Y A Péril En La Demeure ~ Raster-Noton ~ 2015
3:46 am Arrows ~ “A6” ~ Voyage ~ Crash Symbols ~ 2015
3:51 am Yppah ~ “Separate Ways Forever” ~ Tiny Pause ~ Counter ~ 2015
3:56 am Machinedrum ~ “Le Ol Skool” ~ µ20 ~ Planet Mu ~ 2011 Hour 2
4:02 am Yabby U ~ “Rock Vibration” ~ King Tubby’s Prophesy of Dub ~ Blood & Fire ~ 1976
4:08 am Dub Syndicate with Lee “Scratch” Perry ~ “Dubaddisababa” ~ Echomania ~ On-U Sound ~ 1993
4:13 am Pan Ron ~ “Jom Nor Trocheak” ~ Groove Club Vol. 3: Cambodia Rock Intensified! ~ Lion Productions ~ ?
4:16 am Jen Shyu & Jade Tongue ~ “Bloom’s Mouth Rushed In” ~ Sounds and Cries of the World ~ Pi Recordings ~ 2015
4:21 am White Out w/ Nels Cline ~ “Imperative” ~ Accidental Sky ~ Northern Spy ~ 2015
4:27 am Easily Suede ~ “Easily” ~ Role Player ~ Bandcamp ~ 2015
4:37 am Charles Barabé ~ “Les Confessions II” ~ split tape w/ Jean-Sébastien Truchy ~ Unit Structure Sound Recordings ~ 2015
4:56 am Matchess ~ “But Their Chains” ~ Somnaphoria ~ Trouble In Mind ~ 2015 Hour 3
5:02 am Tyler Powell ~ “Soft Sadness” ~ Outgoing Messages ~ Dismal Niche ~ 2015
5:10 am Hylidae ~ “You Don’t Say” ~ Intransitive ~ Dismal Niche ~
5:14 am Helvetia ~ “Pink Finish” ~ Dromomania ~ Joyful Noise ~ 2015
5:18 am X_X ~ “Ghosts” ~ Albert Ayler’s Ghosts Live at the Yellow Ghetto ~ Smog Veil ~ 2015
5:23 am Franck Vigroux & Matthew Bourne ~ “Radioland” ~ Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited ~ Leaf ~ 2015
5:27 am Barbara Morgenstern with Robert Lippok & Justus Köhncke ~ “Übermorgen” ~ Doppelstern ~ Monika Enterprise ~ 2015
5:32 am The Field ~ “Cupid’s Head (Gas Ambient Mix)” ~ Pop Ambient 2014 ~ Kompakt ~ 2013
5:42 am Noah ~ “Flaw” ~ Sivutie ~ flau ~ 2015
5:46 am Julia Holter ~ “Night Song” ~ Have You In My Wilderness ~ Domino ~ 2015
5:50 am Phaedra ~ “Blackwinged Night” ~ Blackwinged Night ~ Rune Grammofon ~ 2015
Mark Applebaum’s percussion piece “30” is actually three pieces in one; it consists of “The First Decade”, “The Second Decade”, and “The Third Decade” all played simultaneously. All three individual pieces are presented by themselves, as well as in combination with one other piece. It’s almost like a sort of Zaireeka experiment performed live. Of course, it all sounds best in the original three-in-one piece, there’s definitely long gaps during the other pieces. But it’s quite interesting to hear them all individually and in combination just to see how it all fits together. Solo piece “The First Decade” is actually a symmetrical stereo piece, with identical instruments played by left and right hands and microphoned so that they pan to their respective channels in the mix. Listening to the piece by itself means 10 minutes of blank space punctuated by woodblocks and cowbells panning rapidly between both channels. “The Second Decade” features a quartet playing different percussion instruments as well as doing choreographed hand gestures and hissing. “The Third Decade” is a bizarre soundscape with dozens of instruments as well as common (or maybe not-so-common) objects, including a manual typewriter, a saw, a corrugated plastic tube called a bloogle, etc. Pretty interesting concept, I’m sure seeing it live would be fascinating.
4th album from the hard-to-categorize Ninja Tune-related artist. As you can probably tell from his name (read it backwards), this is pretty upbeat, positive music. Lots of live drums and guitars and chopped up vocals along with glittery synths. Would very easily fit in a DJ set with Tycho, Bonobo or Four Tet. Plenty of songs stick to a leisurely tempo, but “Neighborhoods” starts out slow then goes into a doubletime drum’n’bass beat. “Separate Ways Forever” is the most chillwave song here, maybe. “Bushmills” has nice crashing drums (which glitch out a bit sometimes) and a sort of surfy feel. Maybe? Sure, let’s just say it does. Also, the album’s graphic design was handled by chiptune artist minusbaby!
“Depressive chillwave” project of Dan Barrett of Have a Nice Life. Quite literally, this album is what happens when you have health problems and are stuck inside, bleeding and strapped to medical machines, unable to go outside and enjoy the gorgeous summer weather, so you decide to make an album. Slow, lurching beats and dark synths, with undistorted (but sad) vocals on top. “My Body Betrayed Me” (the first song released by the project) opens with droning synths and an industrial-like distorted beat, but then the synth melody that comes in sounds like it would be bright if it weren’t so dark, if that makes sense. Instrumental “DSA” lightens things up a bit with a more propulsive beat and synth bassline. Album highlight “Death Sentences” hits me right in the feels with its mantra of “can’t relate to anyone.” “If I Let Him In” is another slow, gloomy electro-pop epic with ticking drum machine beats and hazy synths. To be sure, this is a seriously depressed album, but Barrett has an incredible melodic sense and his lyrics ring true. Quite a remarkable album.
Downright bizarre (and long, at 70 minutes) beat tape from Pat Modugno of Moth Cock. Starts out sounding like an extra tape-fried Madlib mix, but then it just goes off in too many strange directions to keep track of. At one point it sounds like Pacman trying to eat a crunk drum machine beat, before it erupts into silly, sinister pitchshifted laughter. A few hip-hop and reggae samples poke their way in, and it’s hard to tell if they’re being interrupted or if they’re interrupting everything else. So many dimensions to this one, it’s unreal. Try to make sense of it yourself.
The Answer Is In The Beat 