Seriously stunning album by singer-songwriter Melissa Ann Sweat, who makes sparse, haunting songs usually just featuring her voice and piano, and a roomful of echo. Opener “Lapsarian” features accordion, which is always a good way to catch my attention. The dreamy echo brings to mind artists like Grouper, but more than anything else, the frailness and vulnerability of songs like “Wonder, Inc.” reminds me of Daniel Johnston, specifically songs like “Dream Scream”, which is also piano-based and one of my favorite songs of his. Probably not a coincidence, given that her Bandcamp page features a cover of Johnston’s classic “Story Of An Artist”. “Constant Apples” adds some strings and a thicker layer of fog surrounding the piano. I guess the actual CD release features special artwork and a hand-stitched sleeve; the version we got at the radio station is just a promo with no artwork. But even without that, the music here speaks volumes.
More CTatsu tapebliss. “Day” starts off with lots of dolphin sonar tones, rippling through a sea of tape-dulled frequencies. “Blue Island” has an almost Kraftwerkian melody, but without beats, instead just floating peacefully, and again caked in layers of tape hiss. Everything here has such an innocent lo-fi glow to it, it all feels like you’re peering into this wonderful world of bright yet dulled and simplified colors, and when the songs end, you feel like you’re physically being cut off and pulled away from it. Even though they’re not too different than the previous tracks, the last two tracks on here seem to get more expressive, with “Reaching The Open Ocean” stretching past 7 minutes and feeling way more adrift and free.
Hour 1
3:02 AM Oneohtrix Point Never ~ Zebra ~ R Plus Seven ~ Warp
3:09 AM Nobukazu Takemura ~ On A Balloon ~ Scope ~ Thrill Jockey
3:32 AM The Field ~ No. No… ~ Cupid’s Head ~ Kompakt
3:41 AM Jar Moff ~ Tziaitzomanasou ~ Commercial Mouth ~ Pan
3:53 AM Looks Realistic ~ Rainbow Reader ~ Where Does It Come From? ~ Constellation Tatsu Hour 2
4:01 AM Cocteau Twins ~ Cherry-Coloured Funk ~ Heaven or Las Vegas ~ 4AD
4:04 AM Ensemble Economique ~ Into Nowhere Again ~ Fever Logic ~ Not Not Fun
4:10 AM Kevin Greenspon ~ Betrayed By The Angels ~ Betrayed By The Angels/Apropos Of Golden Dreams (split LP w/ Former Selves) ~ Bridgetown
4:13 AM Ron Tubman ~ Cloud Cover While Rafting The Chorna ~ split tape w/ Sugarm ~ Hausu Mountain
4:35 AM R. Stevie Moore ~ Why Can’t I Write A Hit? ~ Personal Appeal ~ Care In The Community
4:38 AM R. Stevie Moore ~ Colliding Circles ~ Glad Music ~ Personal Injury
4:42 AM R. Stevie Moore ~ Theme From Hurricane David ~ Clack! ~ The Prince’s Stable
4:46 AM R. Stevie Moore ~ Part Of The Problem ~ Clack! ~ The Prince’s Stable
4:50 AM Sugarm ~ Moonshine Mile ~ Wasted ~ Hard Disks
4:54 AM LX Sweat ~ Living In The City (No Way Back) ~ City Of Sweat ~ Not Not Fun Hour 3
5:00 AM Mind Over Mirrors ~ Putting It Away ~ When The Rest Are Up At Four ~ Immune
5:04 AM Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group ~ Millions Of Decaliters ~ Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group ~ Sun Ark
5:08 AM Somatic Responses ~ The Illusion Of Control ~ Puny God ~ Photon Emissions
5:15 AM µ-Ziq ~ Airto ~ Somerset Avenue Tracks (1992-1995) ~ Planet Mu
5:22 AM Clams Casino ~ Crystals ~ Grand Theft Auto V
5:26 AM Cohorts ~ Another Night ~ Hipinion Remembers The 90s ~ Hipinion
5:30 AM Boards Of Canada ~ Palace Posy ~ Tomorrow’s Harvest ~ Warp
5:35 AM Slow Magic ~ Youths ~ Triangle ~ LebensStrasse Records
5:38 AM Keep Shelly In Athens ~ Flyway ~ At Home ~ Cascine
5:42 AM Jessy Lanza ~ Giddy ~ Pull My Hair Back ~ Hyperdub
5:46 AM Huerco S. ~ Fortification III ~ Colonial Patterns ~ Software
5:48 AM Seams ~ Sitcom Apartment ~ Quarters ~ Full Time Hobby
5:53 AM The Stranger ~ Spiral Of Decline ~ Watching Dead Empires In Decay ~ Modern Love
5:57 AM Isaac Levine ~ One Outcome: Looking Out Of a Car Window On The Way Home ~ Let Me Into Your Life For No Reason ~ Bandcamp
I haven’t seen the whole video, but this is the first Constellation Tatsu title to be released in VHS form as well as cassette, and if any release on the label fits that aesthetic perfectly, it’s this one. Each side of the tape starts with an audio logo, and there’s such a wasted, weathered quality to it that it just feels like looking at pixel-damaged landscape imagery. “Dot Compost” manages to pull some Steve Reich phasing techniques out of severely mangled cassette tape manipulation. “Rainbow Reader” can’t help but bring to mind the theme song of a familiar PBS program about books that we all grew up watching, but then colorfully explodes with neon synth textures. “Pressed Rock Coating” buries some crushed voices under new age synths, and “Sleep Cadet” does even more so, with shimmering star-lit tones lulling you to sleep.
So glad Somatic Responses are still at it, releasing album after album of crushing rhythmic noise at an unrelenting pace as they’ve done since the mid-’90s. They still release physical CDs and vinyl, but they’ve been taking to Bandcamp lately and unleashing a lot of material, including tons of free albums. Puny God came out at the beginning of the year, and it’s as hard-hitting as anything they’ve ever done. “The Illusion Of Control” in particular is like a more blow-out, ballistic version of mid-’90s Aphex, and “Quartz Riot” shreds drum’n’bass breakbeats over sci-fi synths. “Hammer Drone” injects some acid into intelligent, choppy d’n’b, and “Sharpen The Sword” is obscenely hard, distorted techno (but not to the point of being gabber) with buzzsaw bass and a beatless mechanical drone section in the middle.
Somatic Responses: Sketches
Judging by the title, Sketches is a 102-minute dump of unreleased, unfinished material and odds-and-ends. It definitely has a more cast-off, playful feel, focusing less on their hardcore side and more on melodic, less intense IDM. Some of their material feels like dense, mammoth constructions utilizing dozens, maybe hundreds of tracks simultaneously, but these sound more basic and nowhere near as intense. Still, plenty of fun, mangled beats and sounds, just not quite as developed as their proper releases.
I keep meaning to post about my adoration for all things Blanche Blanche Blanche/OSR Tapes. Wink With Both Eyes was my favorite album of last year, and there’s an astonishing amount of music from this camp that’s been released in the past few years, much of which is available for free download. This tape was released last year by Singapore Sling Tapes, an incredible label home to Piper Spray, Giant Claw, and many others I haven’t fully explored yet. This is a solo tape by the guy from BBB, but it’s definitely in line with their brand of warped lo-fi ADD-pop (or at least their older style, they’ve actually started recording in a studio recently). Lots of demo-quality keyboards, stumbling electronic drums, unnecessarily complicated time signatures, and unlikely earworm melodies. There’s a few covers here (Royal Trux, Ariel Pink, The Cure’s “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”), but it all fits the sort of alternate dimension AM radio vibe. Check it out here.
I don’t even. There’s 500 things going on at once. I can’t see anything. I can’t follow anything. I’m getting lost really deep right now. There’s something resembling a totally crushing beat that I think I’m zoning out to but part of it feels like I’m being tricked and it’s actually something totally different. Then there’s all this free jazz sax, some explosive debris noise, and all manners of hallucinogenic smoke and mirrors. Seriously… I have no clue what is going on here. But I am totally stunned by it.
I posted about the first 2 Sugarm digital EP’s on Foxy Digitalis a long time ago, and a second part of Wasted came out and I never got around to posting about it. Both parts are on Bandcamp, but there’s also a tape on Hard Disks as well. God’s Clit explores dilapidated beats, flanging distortion, and abrasive drone. Opener “Achat D’or” has overblown Southern rap drum machine beats and a furious, crunchy synth pattern, ending in a blast of feedback. “Moonshine Mile” starts out quiet and ponderous, but then some sliced, hard-to-follow beats tumble in, the droning starts swooping and swarming, and it gets really confusing and awesome. “Singing Blacktop” has more convoluted drums and is doused with feedback, but then it gets quiet in the middle and a loop of mischievous laughter surfaces, along with more strange rhythms that barely make sense. “Sick Foliage” is a short, slowly growing guitar drone piece, which ends in a fog of effects that segues into “Empties In The Grass”, which ends up with a really lovely piano melody under more brittle distortion. “New Good Friend” is a more distorted cousin of the EP’s first song, but without the drum machine.
Ron Tubman/Sugarm: split tape
Sugarm’s most recent release is a split tape with Ron Tubman, as part of Hausu Mountain’s Mugen series of splits focusing on solo live performances with no overdubs. Sugarm contributes two pieces, the first one (“500 Dollars”) using a theremin and plenty of delay and modulation, and getting pretty harsh and frightening, especially with the use of ghostly canned voices at the end. “Skinjob” is another harsh drone looper, using an old record and concentric feedback loops, and constantly sounding on the verge of combustion. Sugarm’s side is in total contrast to the Ron Tubman side, which is languid looping guitar drone, but with a healthy layer of feedback noise underneath. A few lovely atmospheric melodies surface, and there’s some wild synth oscillations during the second half of the piece.
Side project of Dewey Mahood from Eternal Tapestry and Garden Sound. Droney instrumental rock, with some noodly blues-psych guitar licks, and some keyboards. Laid back and relaxed, meandering and spacious, but still focused enough to keep all the songs in a 3-6 minute time frame. A couple tracks have drums (“Nightfall”, the hand percussion on opener “Toward The Golden City”), and there’s some keyboards, but the focus is mainly on ringing, chiming acoustic guitars, as well as some blazing distorted solos. The two most different tracks are “Hash Smuggler’s Blues” (full of pulsating tremolo) and the awesome noisy finale of “Siskiyou Caverns”.
The Answer Is In The Beat 