The Answer Is In The Beat

Synthek & Audiolouis: Unwise 2LP (Natch Records, 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 11:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First album from Tresor resident Synthek and his partner Audiolouis, who are both founders of Natch Records. Broken techno similar to the Stroboscopic Artefacts label, in which beats rarely stick to solid 4/4 and instead bustle up and are tough and jagged. “Spiral Path”, however, does indeed have some spiraling synths around a 4/4 stomp, and “Headroom” is a crunchy, peaktime dark techno anthem. But the duo definitely excels in melding dark atmospheres with inventive industrial-strength beats, and there’s no shortage of tracks here which do that.

The Dead Milkmen: Pretty Music For Pretty People (self-released, 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 11:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Philadelphia’s greatest band ever delivers their second album this decade, after taking a decade and a half off (their last album was 1995’s Stoney’s Extra Stout (Pig), after which they broke up, took up other projects, and bassist Dave Blood tragically killed himself in 2004). Self-released, as was their last album, and they put a lot of care into the packaging, and they include the lyrics, which of course is great. Musically, it sounds like the Milkmen, basically; some of it is uptempo punk rock, but there’s slower, sometimes more serious songs, and a little bit more synth than I remember hearing on their older albums (lead singer Rodney Anonymous is a huge industrial fan, and he even namechecks digital hardcore band Ambassador21 on “Make It Witchy”, and Mute Records flagship act The Normal on “Dark Clouds Over Middlemarch”). A lot of the time with this band, the melodies and even verses seem kind of secondary, as if they just came up with a great/funny song title and just built everything else around it, but sometimes that’s all you need. Some things just need to be said, and they just come out and say it, and it’s great. As with the last album, they’re even more pissed off with the world as ever; the title track starts off the album blasting the music industry and “Big Words Make The Baby Jesus Cry” is about the world being brainwashed into being Christian and dumb. “Mary Anne Cotton (The Poisoner’s Song)”, “Somewhere Over Antarctica”, and “Sanitary Times” are the more serious songs that one of the other band members (probably Joe Jack Talcum, or maybe Dean Clean) sings lead on instead of Rodney; “Mary Anne Cotton” is kind of psychedelic folk-pop, “Somewhere Over Antarctica” is a bit darker, like The Church or something, and “Sanitary Times” is a darkly humorous string-synth-laden tune about selling tombs. “Streetlamps/Walking to Work” starts out as a peppy surf instrumental, then turns into a song about ignoring tragedy and not saving people’s lives because of being late to work. “All You Need Is Nothing” puts being poor into perspective; if you have nothing, what is really essential, what can you live without? Love is expensive, it isn’t even part of the question. “Hipster Beard”, somewhat disappointingly, is not actually a song about hipster beards, a subject the Milkmen surely have something amusing to say about. But this is a band that named an original song “I Am The Walrus”, so they’re not immune to playing with your expectations with their song titles. I can’t say there’s anything as astonishingly brilliant/hilarious as “Stuart” on here, nor is there another insanely catchy/funny ditty like “Punk Rock Girl”, but really, it doesn’t matter because the fact that the Dead Milkmen are still around, and they still write Dead Milkmen songs and sound like the Dead Milkmen, and they still play live and tour, means that something is right in this world. I’ve said this before, but my appreciation and respect for this band has only increased as I’ve aged.

Girl Tears: Tension (Sinderlyn, 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 10:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I wanted to hate this because of the band name, but it’s actually kind of refreshing, if only because every song here is a minute or less. The entire album is 9 minutes long, and most of the songs stop abruptly like they’re being cut off mid-thought. Fast, noisy, almost goth-y garage punk (deep spooky voice w/ reverb). “Never Again” and “Tension” are the most hardcore-fast songs. “Lobotomy” has a drumstick-click intro and some tom fills towards the end, so that’s the closest you get to a drum solo (or any kind of solo) on this album. The whole album is over before you can even think, so you might as well just play the whole thing several times in a row.

Lejsovka & Freund: Mold On Canvas LP (Bark And Hiss, 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 9:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Trouble Books are no more, but from their ashes rise this “DIY shitty classical” project. The deconstructed sheet music staff lines on the cover perfectly describe the music, as it sounds like pianos and bowed string instruments transformed and glitched out with computer technology. The traditional instruments may be approached in an amateur way, but they’re explored with enthusiasm. The all-necessary glitches and digital effects they’re bathed in create unique sounds that wouldn’t have been created using traditional means. “From Royal Ave” is the highlight, building layers of gorgeous strings, and then adding some digital debris on top and glitching everything out at the end. “Tangram Cat” is shorter and leaves the piano sounds relatively unscathed, except for some ethereal glowing at the end. But then there’s more pieces like “Moonshadow Bath Song”, which take more heartwarming layers of strings playing lovely melodies, and then just fries them in swarming distortion, and ends with some spare piano notes floating over the decaying sea of digital wreckage. The album ends with a 10-minute journey called “Ah Shit, My Heart Is Full”, building layers of minimalist piano, strings and woodwinds, adding synth arpeggios and digital voices, swirling everything around with effects, and then stripping it down to gentle piano.

Wata Igarashi: Junctions EP 12″ (Midgar, 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 9:18 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

4-track techno EP, mostly of steady not-too-fast tempos. “Flare” builds up to some echo-covered acid, but the real attention-grabber here is the UFO abduction techno of “Hitodama”, which basically sounds like being summoned onto an alien spacecraft through a shaft of light, with a beat. “Junctions” is stuttering and shifting, constantly gazing around while the beats buckle. “The Summon” is more long-dark-tunnel techno, but sounds more like it belongs on a dancefloor than an alien seance.

Jeremiah R.: Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit 12″ (Enklav., 2014)

October 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Very Drexciyan/Arpanet-esque electro. In fact, Gerald Donald (rather, Heinrich Mueller) provided a remix for this artists’ previous 12″, so this is absolutely legit. “Exile” starts the EP in a spacey electro orbit, and then “Illuminated Process” is perfect high-speed nightcruising electro. “Infinite Skies” has a deep pool of bass underneath the ticking beats, and “Interdimensional Beings” backs deep kicks and snares with sparse synth pads and stuttering melodies. The EP’s title track closes things out, more gliding high-speed electro cruising with some off-kilter moods and noises.

Ensemble Economique: Melt Into Nothing (Denovali, 2014)

September 28, 2014 at 10:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Brian Pyle’s Ensemble Economique project continues to refine the gloomy goth-psych-pop sound he’s been creating for years, and damn near perfected with last year’s Not Not Fun-released Fever Logic L.P. This one starts out with “Your Lips Against Mine”, which right away sounds like it should be the theme song to some sort of goth romance movie. So many layers of bubbling guitars, synths and sensuous vocals. “Make-Out In The GDR” continues this mostly instrumentally, with darkened chamber drums beating and vintage 4AD-like guitars. “Never Gonna Die” shrouds organ and vocals in caverns of reverb and has a drum machine shuddering along, and even thunder crashing sounds. The melodies on this album aren’t far away from the melodies on Fever Logic, but it sounded so good last time that it’s hardly a complaint that this is so similar. The album ends with “Melt Into Me”, a coda of spooky heartbeats and rain-swept echoed whispers.