Love Inks are an Austin trio who make minimal electronic indie-pop music similar to bands like Young Marble Giants. The songs generally consist of nothing more than a softly thumping drum machine, a bass guitar line, softly strummed electric guitar (or sometimes very soft organ tones) and ethereal, double-tracked vocals. It’s the type of music where every sound and every lyric counts. Deceptively simple, but it works, and the songs stick with you on repeated listens. Sometimes all it takes is just a phrase like “I don’t hear that” repeated in a nice melody with some pleasing tones (as on “Don’t Hear That”) to do it for you. It almost sounds like they’re suggesting more, but you really can’t imagine them adding more to their sound without making it sound overdone. It doesn’t sound like unfinished demos, it sounds complete. A few songs (“New West”, “Regular Lovers”) have crucial touches of sensuality, and “Sky Machine” has some cool shimmering tremolo guitar effects. “Text Message” is the lone instrumental track here, with abrasive guitar up against a high-pitched sinewave wall, and beats nervously shuddering in the corner. “Spirit Communication” ends the album with a slow jam, with the beats more spaced out and lots of echo on the snare drum, which doesn’t seem to appear on the rest of the album, and is emphasized here to make an impact.
mic break music = Greetings From Spring Break Tapes Vol. 1 cassette compilation
3:01 AM Aphex Twin ~ CIRCLONT6A (syrobonkus mix) ~ Syro ~ Warp
3:08 AM Kid606 ~ Don’t Sweat The Technics (Lexaunculpt Style) ~ Dubplatestyle ~ Vinyl Communications
3:12 AM Lesser ~ Markus Popp Can Kiss My Redneck Ass ~ Welcome To The American Experience ~ Vinyl Communications
3:31 AM Lusine ~ Quiet Day ~ Arterial ~ Ghostly International
3:33 AM Suicideyear ~ U S ~ Remembrance ~ Software
3:39 AM Slow Magic ~ Girls (Kodak To Graph Remix) ~ mp3 ~ Downtown
3:42 AM Lapalux ~ Movement I, II & III ~ mp3 ~ Brainfeeder
3:49 AM TOKiMONSTA ~ Dusty Stars ~ Desiderium ~ Young Art
3:52 AM Little Mack ~ Point Detroit ~ Drac Juke ~ Raveyard
3:56 AM Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler ~ The White Balloon ~ Slant Of Light ~ Thrill Jockey
4:04 AM Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa ~ Dioramasaurus ~ Savage Imagination ~ Thrill Jockey
4:08 AM Sonogram ~ Beta Tester ~ LED Melodies ~ Simulacra
4:12 AM ODESZA ~ Kusanagi ~ In Return ~ Counter
4:15 AM Christopher Willits ~ Connect ~ OPENING ~ Ghostly International
4:23 AM Trentemøller ~ Deceive (Unkwon Remix) ~ Lost Reworks ~ In My Room
4:27 AM Kasper Bjørke ~ Forever ~ After Forever ~ HFN
4:39 AM Laetitia Sadier ~ Quantum Soup ~ Something Shines ~ Drag City
4:46 AM Ashrae Fax ~ CHKN ~ Never Really Been Into It ~ Mexican Summer
4:51 AM The Stargazer Lilies ~ Undone ~ We Are The Dreamers ~ Graveface
4:56 AM SPC ECO ~ Found ~ Sirens And Satellites ~ Saint Marie
5:04 AM UXviE ~ We Should Have Flown ~ mp3 ~ Soundcloud
5:07 AM Aloonaluna ~ Helium ~ aiff ~ Soundcloud
5:10 AM Nima ~ New City Grip ~ See Feel Real ~ Bandcamp
5:12 AM Kwes. ~ Purplehands (patten Remix) ~ ilpix. ~ Warp
5:17 AM Garden City Movement ~ LIR ~ Bengali Cinema ~ BLDG5
5:20 AM Slow Magic ~ Youth Group ~ How To Run Away ~ Downtown
5:24 AM Silje Nes ~ Mirrored ~ The Wire Tapper 35 ~ The Wire
5:30 AM Derek Rogers ~ You Don’t Think In Terms Of Trains ~ Visual Echoes ~ Umor Rex
5:40 AM Ensemble Economique ~ Fade For Miles ~ Melt Into Nothing ~ Denovali
5:50 AM Anjou ~ Readings ~ Anjou ~ Kranky
5:57 AM The Bug ~ Fall ~ Angels & Devils ~ Ninja Tune
Second collaboration album between former Ponytail guitarist and J-Pop starlet. Has the types of lush, circular guitar looping arrangements you’d expect from Wong’s solo stuff, plus the drum machines and vocals of his more recent work. Although it actually seems a little lighter and less mind-bending than some of his last few efforts, but it’s subtle, it takes time to listen to it and absorb everything. It’s definitely not as poppy as Takako songs like “Fantastic Cat”, so don’t expect that type of a cutesy sugar rush. The vocals actually aren’t that noticeable for much of this album, they seem to function as an instrument rather than for lyrical purposes. The tracks all flow together and it’s hard to really pick out highlights, but “Dioramasaurus” has a guitar melody that sums up the album pretty well and ends up burrowing its way into your head. “Dancing Venus Of Aurora Clay” starts with lots of clapping before the guitars spiral in and the drum machine kicks in. “Dimension Dive” is a 3-part suite, and part 1 has another guitar melody similar to “Dioramasaurus”, but with lighter beats. “Luminescent Earth Traveler” has some vintage-sounding drum machine beats mixed in, along with lots of really playful sounds. The whole album is fun and relaxing and enjoyable, and they’re playing the MOCAD on November 9, so that will be incredible, and a rare opportunity to see Minekawa, I have no clue if she’s ever played Detroit before.
Maurizio Bianchi is one of those hyper-prolific artists whose music I’ve always admired but never really delved into, simply because there’s so much of it, so much of it is so hard to find, and how do I really know where to start, or stop? But that’s about to change because now that I’m sitting down and listening to this album, I’m just blown away by how incredible it is. The 4 compositions on here are named by their track lengths (which do add up to exactly an hour), and from the beginning, “Seventeen Minutes And Fifty Seconds” is just hard to turn away from. Every time I listen to it on different speakers and different volume levels, I hear something different. Sometimes it’s icy microscopic glitch, sometimes it’s fluttery insects in thick night air. It doesn’t seem to change throughout much of its duration, but it pulls you in, and then when it does start to shuffle up around the 11 minute mark, it feels like everything’s starting to fly around you and gets you prepared for something chaotic to happen. “Twelve Minutes And Thirteen Seconds” is a long trawl through some dark haunted passageway, with all manners of tints and distortions fraying the edges of your vision. “Eight Minutes And Twenty-Seven Seconds” is tense dark ambient drone, which seems to incubate a glowing dismal orb, with fluid radioactive sparks squirming from it. “Twenty-One Minutes And Twenty-Nine Seconds” has crystalline sound loops which sort of outline a melody, with a calm but vaguely stiff and metallic drone beneath. The sounds very subtly shudder and vibrate if you pay attention, but it’s easy to just get lost and let it all wash over you. The blurb on the back of the jewel case sums up how this album is meditative and relaxing, but at the same time sort of rough. It uses the term “conscientious entertainment”, and questions what to do after you’re done listening and meditating to this album. Good question. It’s not accurate to call this noise or power electronics or industrial, but it’s not a simple ambient or drone record either. All I know is that this is going to sound perfect this winter, and not in some sort of cliched predictable “frostbitten cold bleakness” way.
Newest full length from Digitalis founder Brad Rose’s current main project. Murky bubbly synth sounds, with a definite rhythm but less “techno” sounding than previous Charlatan stuff. Still gets pretty noisy, as on the end of “Blur Suit”. “Lonely City” has a pretty sweet, gelatinous ooze-smeared Detroit techno melody and bass pulse, without an actual beat. “Skulled” has more showers of fractalized modular synths over a swampy bass pulse. “The Cure” opens with thrashing, sloppy noise bursts and only gets crazier and more corrupted from there, until some sort of awkward beat emerges halfway through. Utterly bizarre and fascinating. “Double Blind Host” is another track with sort of an awkward misplaced-sounding beat, or rather a couple rhythms superimposed on each other which sort of fit. It’s definitely the most “minimal synth” sounding track here, if that means anything, which it most likely doesn’t. “Antiprism” has another lurching synth rhythm over gritty drum machine beats, with more synth detritus stumbling along afterwards. And “Nightmaring”, be glad that slithering monster is just in your dreams and not your life. Super incredible stuff as always, recommended to those interested in both vintage experimental electronic music and the way-out-there side of abstract dance music.
Christopher Willits has been part of the Ghostly family for 10 years, and was releasing material on Taylor Deupree’s 12k label before that. But his highest-profile work in recent memory has been his production and mastering work on Tycho’s recent breakthrough album Awake. Listening to Willits’ new album, it’s hard not to think of it as sort of an ambient companion piece to that album, especially since Tycho’s Scott Hansen provided instantly recognizable, triangle-heavy artwork for this album, plus he and his band members contribute heavily to this album. While Awake had uptempo rhythms and U2-like guitar melodies, opening is much calmer and more relaxed, a 45-minute warm sunrise of an album. Beats pop up occasionally to push things along, and sometimes (as on “Clear”) they’re striking, but not in a way that’s overbearing. The beats get most involved in the album’s 2 longest tracks, “Connect” and “Wide”, which slowly unfold with chiming guitars, subtle glitches, and softly pulsing bass along with the beats. “Release” ends the album by doing just that, summing up the album’s wide-scope panoramic sound of sky-blue ambience and slowly thumping beats.
ODESZA’s rise to popularity has been lightning-fast, already signing to Ninja Tune-affiliated label Counter after releasing several free self-released EPs and an album since 2012. They’ve been constantly touring since then (and they’re coming to the Blind Pig on 10/8!), and at this point they’re selling out shows in advance. This album refines their glossy, chopped-vocal chillwave sound into something more high-res and poppy, with more than half the tracks featuring guest vocalists. This results in some fun poppy songs (“Say My Name”, with a chorus joyously declaring “I wanna dance with you!”, and appropriately dancey music), but I feel like their sound says enough without lyrics. There’s enough sampled vocals in their music already that it still sounds coherent and communicates something, and even if the vocals are chopped up beyond the constraints of words, they still are catchy enough to stick in your head. The tracks without proper vocals seem kind of short, you kind of wish they’d go on longer, but if they did they’d probably just be repeating themselves, so really they’re fine the way they are. But even on the songs with proper vocals and lyrics, the vocal samples are used as an extra instrument, used to accentuate specific moments of ecstasy (as on “Echoes”). They draw from a variety of exotic-sounding influences too, with tracks like “Sundara”, “Kusanagi”, and “Koto” having Eastern-sounding instruments and vocal samples complementing their titles, and thumb pianos (among other acoustic instruments) showing up in tracks like “It’s Only”. Overall my favorite track would have to be “Koto”, with its no-nonsense tough distorted beat, crystalline melodies and glitched vocal samples. Extended bliss-out closer “For Us” is another highlight, though, with another chilled yet adrenaline-rushing beat, and an extended cool-down period for the last couple minutes. When vocalist Briana Marela sings “it feels like it’s perfect”, it pretty much does.
Hour 1
3:00 AM CAN ~ Vitamin C ~ Ege Bamyasi ~ Spoon/Mute
3:04 AM Sonogram ~ Equivocals ~ LED Melodies ~ Simulacra
3:08 AM Simian Mobile Disco ~ Jam Side Up ~ Whorl ~ Anti-
3:13 AM Christopher Willits ~ Clear ~ Opening ~ Ghostly International
3:19 AM Slow Magic ~ Closer ~ How To Run Away ~ Downtown
3:25 AM ODESZA ~ Koto ~ In Return ~ Counter
3:29 AM Noah Creshevsky ~ What If ~ Rounded With A Sleep ~ Pogus Productions
3:32 AM Charlatan ~ Double Blind Host ~ Local Agent ~ Umor Rex
3:35 AM :zoviet*france: and Fossil Aerosol Mining Project ~ North Of North (Broadcast Mix 2) ~ .wav ~ Soundcloud
3:38 AM Sparkling Wide Pressure ~ I Do Not Have Words ~ split tape w/ Madrugapha ~ Salvador Records
3:42 AM BLACKHOoDS ~ Green Canyons ~ mp3 ~ Bandcamp
3:50 AM Evy Jane ~ Worry Heart ~ Closer EP ~ Ninja Tune
3:54 AM De Leon ~ side B track 3 ~ tape ~ Aught Hour 2
4:00 AM Jerry Hunt ~ Chimanzzi: Drape: Link 1993 [Derivative Extraction: (Birome: Zone): Plane: (Fixture)] ~ Haramnd Plane: Three Translation Links ~ Pogus Productions
4:06 AM Damian Catera ~ Vivaldi Concerto In G Minor Pop ~ Baroque Treasures ~ Praxis Classics
4:11 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₁::check ~ 0ºC ~ Touch
4:11 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₂::cacoepy ~ Touch
4:12 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₃::circuit ~ Touch
4:12 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₄::contexture ~ 0ºC ~ Touch
4:14 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₅::cuts ~ 0ºC ~ Touch
4:15 AM Ryoji Ikeda ~ C₆::counterpoint ~ 0ºC ~ Touch
4:18 AM Mama Baer & Kommissar Hjuler ~ Untitled II ~ Zahn – Polizei ~ Placenta Recordings
4:31 AM Lawrence English ~ Another Body ~ Wilderness Of Mirrors ~ Room40
4:38 AM Pjusk ~ Glott ~ Solstøv ~ 12k
4:44 AM Girma Yifrashewa ~ Elilta ~ Love & Peace ~ Unseen Worlds
4:51 AM Joel Andrews ~ Seraphic Borealis ~ I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America, 1950-1990 Hour 3
5:03 AM If, Bwana/Trio Scordatura ~ Ringing (Ano)the(r) Bell ~ E (And Sometimes Why) ~ Pogus Productions
5:10 AM Taylor Deupree ~ Field (Beta) ~ Lost & Compiled ~ 12k
5:18 AM M.B. ~ Seventeen Minutes And Fifty Seconds ~ An Hour With… ~ Placenta Recordings
5:37 AM Jorge Antunes ~ Mixolydia ~ In Defense Of The Machine ~ Pogus Productions
5:48 AM Philip Corner ~ Piece For String Instrument #5 ~ Pieces From The Past ~ Pogus Productions
5:51 AM Frances White ~ In The Library Of Dreams ~ In The Library Of Dreams ~ Pogus Productions
The Answer Is In The Beat 