The Answer Is In The Beat

Crush Collision 8/6/15

August 7, 2015 at 9:54 am | Posted in Crush Collision | Leave a comment

Hour 1
10:02 PM µ-Ziq ~ Houzz 3
10:06 PM Heathered Pearls ~ Perfume Catalogue
10:09 PM Assembler ~ Schizo-Exstatic I/O
10:17 PM Erich Schall ~ Dubcutan
10:21 PM Lazerhawk ~ Escape From Germany
10:25 PM Ovrkl ~ Frankfurt Express
10:29 PM Tairiq & Garfield ~ Swept Over The Rug
10:32 PM Cotton Crown ~ In Vitro (Mark Broom Edit)
10:38 PM Quadratic ~ Wrong Lane (Chrissy Remix)
10:42 PM Revy ~ Sluglord
10:52 PM Ryan Huber ~ Arms Of Rahab
Hour 2
11:00 PM Vessels ~ Echo In (Ripperton Remix)
11:08 PM God Of The Machine ~ Warpaint (Santonio Echols Remix)
11:12 PM SHLTR ~ Earth From Within
11:18 PM Trickfinger ~ Exlam
11:21 PM HAN ~ Brooke
11:26 PM Drivetrain ~ Take Your Time
11:29 PM Blond:ish ~ Endless Games (Patrice Bäumel Dub Mix)
11:34 PM San2 ~ Distinguishing Bias
11:39 PM Detroit’s Filthiest ~ Down Low (125 BPM Mix)
11:40 PM Detroit’s Filthiest ~ Sounds Of The City (125 BPM Mix)
11:43 PM Victor Santana ~ Destination Zero
11:49 PM Yousef ~ The Courtship
11:50 PM Gary Martin ~ Well (Robert Hood Remix)
11:56 PM Edit Select ~ Hi Line Extraction

Robert Crouch: Organs (Dragon’s Eye, 2015)

August 5, 2015 at 11:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Robert Crouch: Organs

The three lengthy pieces on this album attempt to draw connections between organs of the body with the musical instrument known as the organ. The first track (“Somniloquy (an egg): A Choreography of Emancipation”) features recordings of Crouch playing a broken church organ, and it has such a strange crushed decaying sound to it. There’s also distant birds, conversation, and even other music faintly playing in the background, underneath the organ drone landscape and the crunching, deconstructing sound of the broken organ. It swells up towards the end, and as it fades away, there’s some sort of distant clapping rhythm. “The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.” is nearly a half hour long, and has a tense throbbing rumble throughout its first part, but this gradually clears out to more glacial, soothing drones, which are still in the distance buried amongst field recordings. “The Propaganda of History” is much shorter at only 10 minutes, and is built around an oblong loop of fireworks exploding, giving it another odd rhythm. This one also swells up with organ droning, becoming immersive and expansive.

Andrew Tuttle: Slowcation tape (A Guide To Saints, 2015)

August 5, 2015 at 9:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Andrew Tuttle: Slowcation tape

Formerly known as Anonymeye, Andrew Tuttle has been creating a unique brand of electro-acoustic folk music for years, with scads of albums and EPs to his name. This tape continues experimental avant-(Australian-)Americana, blending banjos and Fahey-style acoustic guitar with analog synths and drifting tape drone. MC Schmidt of Matmos plays acoustic guitar on “Post Meridiem Construction”, and the connection makes perfect sense, given some of their folk/acoustic/Americana experiments. This tape has such a warm, natural blend of earthy acoustic instruments and fluttering, exciting electronics. He’s just so good at this it’s astonishing. The second half of the tape focuses less on acoustic instruments, and the final track is a shimmering Laurie Spiegel-scape. Excellent tape.

Infinity Frequencies: Into the Light tape (Dream Catalogue™, 2015)

August 5, 2015 at 7:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Infinity Frequencies: Into The Light tape

Vaporwave, I have to admit, is a genre that I don’t always get and honestly think there’s far too much of out there. Way too much of it just seems lazy and derivative and cheesy and like not a whole lot of effort was put into it. I’m sure a bunch of nerds will argue that that’s all exactly the point, in which case I would just rather listen to something real. Not all vaporwave (or whatever nebulous internet non-genre gets used to describe stuff like this) comes off this way to me though, some of it seems like it’s doing something different. Japanese producer Infinity Frequencies has released some recordings that have caught my attention. I feel like this artist is maybe a little closer to something like The Caretaker, but only slightly. There’s still plenty of slowed down elevator music type samples, and it’s all covered in VHS hiss, but it seems to have a little bit more of an ethereal sheen to it. Actually, as I listen to it more, it doesn’t really sound all that different from most vaporwave. I just happen to enjoy it more for some reason.

France Jobin & Fabio Perletta: Mirror Neurons (Dragon’s Eye, 2015)

August 4, 2015 at 8:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

France Jobin & Fabio Perletta: Mirror Neurons

I recently reviewed a Fabio Perletta album which was absolutely lovely, the type of hypnotic glitchy ambient that always immediately captures my attention and makes me happy. This album is a bit different than that. It’s a bit closer to the realm of “lowercase listening”. The first track, “Parallel”, needs to be turned up way loud before you can hear anything, and even then it’s just a faint drone which slightly blossoms a bit more during the second half of its 14 minute duration. “Reflection” is a little more immediate (not really the right word), starting out with a luminescent drone and then easing in some sneaky bass. Again, it helps if you turn this one all the way up, it’s hard to notice the subtleties if it’s too quiet. For a while it has a sharp yet not too piercing sine wave tone, then it fades into lovely organ drone, before introducing more tones that will drive your dog crazy. “Mimesis” has similar ringing tones, but they shift and glitch a bit, before landing at a more drifting (and slightly barren, desolate) passage. Eventually it develops and gets richer and deeper, before the ringing sine waves take over. I’m not sure if this release counts as “deep listening” or “lowercase listening” or maybe a combination or maybe neither of those actually exist and it’s whatever you make of it. Regardless, it is an immersive experience.

Anthony Donovan & John 3:16: Of The Hex And Its Likenesses (Flood Records, 2015)

August 2, 2015 at 7:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Anthony Donovan & John 3:16: Of The Hex & Its Likenesses

A bit less “post-rock” than I remember the previous John 3:16 album sounding like, this one has vaguely spaghetti western-sounding guitars, which sometimes erupt into harsh feedback, as well as shamanic drumming and atmospheres, creepy whispered vocals, and clicking/sparkling electronic tones. It is nebulous and orbital. It meanders, but then it is grounded and focused. It resists order and format and clears its own path. It is swampy and down-and-out, yet it’s viewing the cosmos from a spiraling asteroid twisting its way throughout the solar system.

OverScan: Conscious tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2015)

August 2, 2015 at 6:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

OverScan: Conscious tape

This one’s sort of like Tim Hecker without all the prestige and hype and monolithic dark-room performances. Well, at least the distortion on the first track brings up the easy comparison to Tim Hecker. I don’t want to say “low-budget” or “poor man’s” because that devalues this. But basically there’s plenty of music out there that isn’t getting all the Pitchfork hype and is even available for free download that is still noisy and spacey and droney and fantastic. This one gets more stargazing and sweeping and drifting as it goes on. Really bright, expressive cosmic synth melodies and sometimes crickets (as on “Perspective”). “Terrorvision” flows a little bit into dark ambient territory, but not enough that it can’t still be considered new age (maybe). “The Pitch” is sort of similar, it’s brighter-sounding but there’s still some weird voices buried underneath. In general, a nice starry wash of sound that hugs you like a fuzzy blanket.

Show #301 – 8/1/15

August 1, 2015 at 12:23 pm | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment

mic break music = Maxwell Gualtieri: For Los Angeles
3:00 AM Land of the Loops ~ My Head (Leaks) ~ Bundle of Joy ~ Up
3:04 AM /f ~ 0ks09 ga0dvj9 (fjvnf) fi902 +94~ovis.v+@)3 =V ~ pq:c ~ Bandcamp
3:13 AM Fabio Perletta ~ Winter, Awakening ~ Unseed ~ Arboretum
3:21 AM Kevin Greenspon ~ Lexical Trap ~ To Leave A Mark ~ Bridgetown Records
3:29 AM Dead Hands On A Piano ~ Loony Cops ~ Walking Around ~ Placenta Recordings
3:33 AM Astronauta Pinguim ~ The Garden of Earthly Delights ~ Zeitgeist/Propaganda ~ Pine Apple Music
3:37 AM Ben Zimmerman ~ The Space Jack Hummer ~ The Baltika Years ~ Software
3:42 AM Cylob ~ Granular Psychosis (Ect Mix) ~ Inflatable Hope ~ Power Vacuum
3:45 AM Venetian Snares ~ Red Orange 2 ~ Your Face ~ Planet Mu
3:49 AM Assembler ~ Virtual Viking Tears ~ Quantum Paths of Desire ~ Infinite Waves
3:55 AM Floex ~ Saturnin Fire and the Restless Ocean (Hidden Orchestra Remix) ~ Reorchestrations ~ Denovali
4:01 AM RP Boo ~ Freezaburn ~ Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints ~ Planet Mu
4:04 AM Corduroi ~ Atlantek ~ Oceanarium ~ Raw Paw
4:07 AM Maduro ~ Vapor Guns ~ Call to Arms ~ Component
4:12 AM Adoption ~ side B ~ Nineteen Ninety ~ Skrot Up
4:15 AM Bamboo Stilts ~ Dark ~ Beneath the Bark ~ Eilean Records
4:20 AM Gavin Gamboa ~ Absolute Reality ~ Dōgen’s Garden On The Surface Of Mars ~ Bandcamp
4:23 AM Twigs & Yarn ~ In the Valley ~ Still Forms Drift ~ Eilean Records
4:32 AM Mario Diaz de León ~ Luciform ~ The Soul is the Arena ~ Denovali
4:45 AM Anthony Donovan & John 3:16 ~ Orphite and Orphan ~ Of the Hex and Its Likenesses ~ Flood Records
4:53 AM Neil On Impression ~ Perde Pezzi Di Sé ~ L’Oceano Delle Onde Che Restano Onde Per Sempre ~ Denovali
5:00 AM Fox Millions Duo ~ Telegy / Time Lapse ~ Lost Time ~ Thrill Jockey
5:20 AM Ebauche ~ Ashore ~ Adrift ~ Invisible Agent
5:32 AM OverScan ~ Conscious ~ Conscious ~ Constellation Tatsu
5:38 AM Sarah Davachi ~ Olsun ~ Qualities of Bodies Permanent ~ Constellation Tatsu
5:46 AM EH46 ~ Monument ~ A God With Horns ~ Bridgetown Records
5:54 AM Pass Into Silence ~ Iceblink ~ Pop Ambient 2006 ~ Kompakt