The Answer Is In The Beat

Tochigi: The Gang East Of The River (Tochigi Records, 2014)

October 23, 2014 at 9:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Self-described “Japanese apartment compact rock” from Seattle. Which means that the 25 songs on this 32-minute album are tightly packed and to-the-point. Some of them are punk-ish, like opener “Dictator”, but others have more of a shambling C86/Pastels vibe. Plenty of the songs cut off very suddenly and awkwardly. In some ways, this reminds me of the great, sadly-defunct Chinese noise-punk duo Pairs, except not as blown out and distorted. Scott And Charlene’s Wedding also comes to mind, for the matter-of-fact tales of mundane city life. Somehow I’m even reminded of the Dead Milkmen on some of the midtempo tracks, at least musically (I’m thinking songs like “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies”), but without overtly jokey lyrics. Like Pink Flag-era Wire and Guided By Voices, Tochigi manages to pack plenty of ideas and even time changes in these short, abstract skewed-pop songs, although these songs aren’t quite as earworm-catchy as their forebears. Still, this is a promising, slightly perplexing, certainly enjoyable effort from a group with an abundance of ideas and no time to waste. Also, bonus points for minute-long apocalypse-sigh “The World Is Coming To And End”, because I always love simple, pretty songs about the end of the world.

Wrekmeister Harmonies: Then It All Came Down (Thrill Jockey, 2014)

October 21, 2014 at 8:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Last year, Thrill Jockey released Wrekmeister Harmonies’ You’ve Always Meant So Much To Me on vinyl. That was my introduction to this project and it blew me away. This week, the follow-up came out, and both albums were released on one CD. You can read my review of You’ve Always Meant… here, so I’m just reviewing the newer LP now. Then It All Came Down, like its predecessor, takes a very long time to build, with some faintly chiming bells and plucked guitars, and angelic vocals, over arctic drone. Around 10 minutes the storm sets in. Anything light and angelic goes away, and then the growling metal vocals drift in, and there’s crashing thunder sounds. Mournful strings swell up, along with guitar feedback and phantom-like non-metal vocals, and the tension just mounts. Finally, around the 19.5 minute mark, metal guitar chords and drums slowly crash in, and the vocals become more deformed and depraved, finally letting loose a scream at 21:00. Around 23.5 minutes, it fully kicks into a sludgy, torrential rhythm with abrasive guitar squeals. It seems to calm down and there’s a calm, melodic plucked guitar pattern, but that just sets the scene for even more intense screamed metal vocals and guitar blasts. It doesn’t take as long for this piece to end as it does for it to begin, it’s only a few minutes to the end after the screaming stops.

Locust: After The Rain (Editions Mego, 2014)

October 18, 2014 at 9:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Mark Van Hoen (ex-Seefeel) continues to resurrect his Locust project, which released its first album since 2001 last year, on new home Editions Mego. This autumnal album definitely feels like a soundtrack of sorts, with the songs all blending into each other and having a common mood. Most of them are pretty short, which further makes them feel like variations on a theme. The songs generally feature immersive synth tones reminsicent of classic ’70s/’80s European ambient music and occasionally downtempo beats and shadowy vocals. “To Lonely Shores” in particular has kind of a spooky Twin Peaks/Rosemary’s Baby feel, with its sighing wordless vocals. “Shadows Cast By Planes” has loping tabla-like beats during its first half, then settles into ambience during the second. “I’ll Be There” is the most uptempo, poppy track, with harp-like sounds and melodies reminiscent of Plaid at their prettiest and most accessible, but like the previous track, it switches gears halfway through and goes into a dream-like second part with a slow heartbeat-like rhythm. “Signals” has some spoken word samples which are submerged enough that you can’t make out what they’re saying, along with a few bits of backwards harp notes and carefully measured synths. “Sky Black Horses” features eerie backwards shuddering beats which slowly fade in and out like a percussive tornado appearing, moving away, reappearing, and then repeating the cycle. “Won’t Be Long” ends the album with more shadowy vocals, and Ryuichi Sakamoto soundtrack atmospheres.

Oren Ambarchi: Quixotism (Editions Mego, 2014)

October 16, 2014 at 8:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

On Oren Ambarchi’s latest release, he teams up with an all-star cast to realize an excellent work of steady, pulsating minimalism. Thomas Brinkmann provides a steady electronic rhythm which courses throughout the album’s entire 47-minute runtime, which constantly simmers and gradually adds flourishes and variations, and sometimes seems to play with the other instruments, which add accents in time to the rhythm. The second, third and fourth parts seem to be most influenced by minimal techno and clicks’n’cuts, with the third part having a bit more rhythmic variation and additional percussion. On the 18-minute first part, the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra provides a dissonant sound bed, while piano notes from John Tilbury and delicate, panned guitar notes from Ambarchi resonate in the foreground. Eyvind Kang provides bowed instruments in the first and last parts, and Jim O’Rourke adds rippling synths to the last two. The last part unexpectedly features delicate tabla playing accompanying the solemn viola and chiming synths. It builds up to a wondrous, quietly intense part around 10 minutes, then strips back down to a pulse for the remaining minutes.

Pharmakon: Bestial Burden (Sacred Bones, 2014)

October 14, 2014 at 11:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second full-length from Margaret Chardiet’s industrial/power electronics project, which has recently toured with Swans, Godflesh and Cut Hands (William Bennett of Whitehouse). This is every bit as gory and sickness-inducing as its artwork suggests. Opener “Vacuum” is 90 seconds of heavy breathing which escalates into hyperventilating, and “Intent or Instinct” is 8 minutes of slow throbbing beats, feedback, and larynx-shredding vocals. “Body Betrays Itself” is a bit more concise and approachable, the vocals come in earlier and aren’t quite as screamy in the beginning, and the synths sort of melt into a haze during the last couple minutes. “Primitive Struggle” is 2 minutes of choking and coughing to a beat. “Autoimmune” is far and away the highlight of the album, just a total stormer which could even fit next to Skinny Puppy at your next hard industrial dance party. “Bestial Burden” is the most disturbing track on the album, in which Chardiet alternates between a girlish voice, hellish screaming, and nervous, pained laughter, all while repeatedly exclaiming “I don’t belong here”, in some sort of Alice In Hades nightmare. I’m not really well versed enough in power electronics as a genre to be able to compare Pharmakon to anyone else, so I’m inevitably reminded of Wolf Eyes and Whitehouse just because they’re more well known, and I’m sure being on Sacred Bones gives her exposure to a much different fanbase than if she’d just stuck to tape labels. But this is a bloody, infected, diseased, fascinating album.

Failed Flowers: Demo 2014 tape (self-released, 2014)

October 5, 2014 at 2:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

One of the newest ventures from the Ann Arbor indie-pop community that includes members of Saturday Looks Good To Me and Bad Indians. This is a sharp, jangly, mostly speedy C86-indebted lo-fi group, with Autumn and Fred both handling vocals. Almost all of the songs are under 2 minutes, and while the tape starts out punky, the song called “Fuck You” is actually slower, quieter, and sadder. Kind of fitting, as is the band’s name, and the lyrics and the general feel of the music; it all just suggests disconnection, things not working out. After all the brooding tension of the short, punkier songs, it takes a 4 minute instrumental called “Episodes” to clear everything out, before the last burst “Matters”. Tape and download available on Bandcamp.