Lidless Eye is one of the many projects of Knox Mitchell, who runs Green Records & Tapes. Most of his releases are ultra-limited tapes and CDR’s that you can pretty much only get from the artist himself. I was really impressed with his live performances, so I’m glad Fred Thomas recorded and released a Lidless Eye vinyl, it sounds amazing. Sort of like Cotton Museum, this isn’t pierce-your-eardrums noise, it’s throbbing, lurching, queasy noise. Lots of whale-like high-pitched sounds and an electrified pulse. Very hypnotic. Still available from Life Like.
July 7, 2013 at 10:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Comments Off on D33J: Tide Songs tape (Anticon, 2013)
D33J: Tide Songs
I saw this guy open for labelmate Baths, and he definitely stole the show. Really nice grimy hazy lo-fi techno that could fit in with 100% Silk type stuff. I think this tape is actually the official release of a digital EP from a couple years ago, so some of it sounds a little bit different than the type of stuff he played live. Opening track “Park” is like what I heard at the show, calm but gradually evolving house beats and mutating synths. “Young Wavy” is just a short interlude, but it’s closer to what you might expect from Anticon; blunted abstract hip-hop beats. True to the tape’s title, there’s plenty of wave sounds throughout the tape. “Reever’s Edge” has a more uptempo beat, seriously warped synths and a vocal sample of an argument ending with “believe it or not, you’re important to me.” There’s also a bit of a guitar melody and some chopped up vocal samples, including the one from the beginning. On side B, “Drowning Pools” has more guitar melody and glitched up synths along with a nice building beat. “Sleeping Out” ends the tape with another wistful, slightly glitchy hip-hop instrumental. A nice surprise, both the tape and the live set.
Nate Young of Wolf Eyes continues his Regression series, moving further away from the noise and industrial that Wolf Eyes fans might know him best for, and even going beyond the more spacious minimal noise of Stare Case and recent Wolf Eyes. There’s a peculiar stillness here; at times it almost feels like the soundtrack to a not-particularly-exciting RPG or fantasy-type movie. That’s not meant as a knock, though, as there’s some interesting textures here. “Beneath The Mist” is a little closer to what you might expect from his recent group work; it’s instrumental, and only 2 minutes long, but there’s some quietly knocking electronic percussion and some briefly fizzling-out noises. “When Nothing Works” begins with tension-heavy feedback, then switches to thundering echo and arpeggiating synth. “Only Fallen Heads” has a warm melody with warped, decaying textures underneath. “Escape With Nothing” and “Between” are both shorter musique concrete-like pieces. “Escape With Nothing” ends with some clanging sounds and explosions, and “Between” has a warm, pastoral sound which sounds like it’s going to turn into a melody, but it gets cut out by buzzing sounds. “The Bastards Gums” is the most recognizably melodic and rhythmic piece here, bobbing melancholy synths on top of a steady click and being attacked by thin, swooping sound waves.
mic break music = Matt Davignon: The 3am Music Hour 1
3:01 AM Ashrae Fax ~ Ectome ~ Static Crash ~ Mexican Summer
3:09 AM Dan Deacon ~ Why Am I On This Cloud? ~ mp3 ~ Adult Swim Singles Program
3:13 AM Congo Natty ~ UK Allstars (Machinedrum Remix) ~ single ~ Big Dada
3:18 AM CFCF ~ Camera ~ Music For Objects ~ Paper Bag
3:21 AM Nate Young ~ Worlds Behind ~ Blinding Confusion ~ NNA Tapes
3:26 AM White Poppy ~ Daydreaming ~ Drifter’s Gold ~ Constellation Tatsu
3:29 AM pacificUV ~ I Think It’s Coming ~ After The Dream You Are Awake ~ Mazarine Records
3:34 AM Carta ~ The Hollow Greeting ~ The Faults Follow ~ Saint Marie
3:38 AM Zomby ~ Glass Ocean ~ With Love ~ 4AD
3:40 AM Sawi Lieu ~ Subjectless World ~ Pasaraya ~ Constellation Tatsu
3:45 AM Obnox ~ Deep In The Dusk (Redux) ~ Corrupt Free Enterprise ~ 12XU
3:49 AM exclusiveOr ~ World On A Wire ~ Archaea ~ Carrier Records
3:56 AM Israel Quellet ~ Pour Percussions Et Saturation ~ An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music / Seventh And Last A-Chronology ~ Sub Rosa Hour 2
4:02 AM Eric Moe/Firebird Ensemble ~ Preamble And Dreamsong From The 4-5 A.M. REM Stage ~ Meanwhile Back At The Ranch ~ New World Records
4:10 AM Justin Walter ~ Western Tears ~ Lullabies & Nightmares ~ Kranky
4:14 AM Shells ~ Warm Dub ~ In A Cloud ~ Life Like
4:17 AM Aloonaluna ~ Stutter-sleep Dance ~ split tape w/ Motion Sickness Of Time Travel ~ Constellation Tatsu
4:23 AM Algebra Suicide ~ Please Respect Our Decadence ~ Feminine Squared ~ Dark Entries
4:25 AM Boards Of Canada ~ Nothing is Real ~ Tomorrow’s Harvest ~ Warp
4:35 AM Co La ~ Suspicious (Sandman Fix) ~ Moody Coup ~ Software
4:39 AM Xex ~ Fast Food ~ Change ~ Dark Entries
4:43 AM Los Microwaves ~ What’s That Got To Do (With Loving You?) ~ Life After Breakfast ~ Dark Entries
4:48 AM Belaboris ~ Odotus ~ Once Upon a Time ~ Dark Entries
4:51 AM Q4U ~ Sigurinn ~ Q1 Deluxe Edition 1980-1983 ~ Dark Entries
4:54 AM Piper Spray ~ Sigma Draconis ~ Epigraph To The Bright Star Catalogue ~ Singapore Sling Tapes Hour 3
5:00 AM Gold Panda ~ S950 ~ Half Of Where You Live ~ Ghostly International
5:02 AM Quasimoto ~ Am I Confused ~ Yessir Whatever ~ Stones Throw
5:05 AM Rebel Kind ~ Wintertime ~ Laurel Canyon ~ Life Like
5:07 AM Saturday Looks Good To Me ~ Johnny ~ One Kiss Ends It All ~ Polyvinyl
5:09 AM Black Bug ~ Delta ~ Reflecting The Light ~ HoZaC
5:12 AM Blanche Blanche Blanche ~ Family Of One ~ Wooden Ball ~ NNA Tapes
5:13 AM Ariel Pink ~ Nothing At All/Different Names ~ Thrash & Burn ~ Human Ear Music
5:15 AM Dirty Beaches ~ Casino Lisboa ~ Drifters/Love Is The Devil ~ Zoo Music
5:19 AM Sun City Girls ~ Esoterica Of Abyssynia ~ Eye Mohini: Sun City Girls Singles Vol. 3 ~ Abduction
5:24 AM Cambodian Space Project ~ Not Easy Rock N Roll ~ Metal Postcard Records Radio Sampler ~ Metal Postcard Records
5:37 AM [PHYSICS] ~ The Keep ~ Spectramorphic Iridescence ~ Digitalis
5:41 AM Ocoeur ~ Resonance ~ Light As A Feather ~ n5MD
5:47 AM Ruxpin ~ Love Interest ~ This Time We Go Together ~ n5MD
5:51 AM Melorman ~ Glow ~ Waves ~ Sun Sea Sky Productions
5:55 AM Northcape ~ Trailhead ~ Exploration And Ascent ~ Sun Sea Sky Productions
Newest release from Mike Silver, creating audio miniatures inspired by normal everyday items. Like Exercises, his last release, this continues in a heavily Ryuichi Sakamoto/David Sylvian inspired direction, with “Turnstile” having a bit of an Eastern sounding melody to it. “Glass” reminds me of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and I swear it’s not just because it’s called “Glass”. There’s plenty of chilled out xylophone-like percussion patterns on a lot of the tracks that remind me of Steve Reich’s percussion-based works. “Camera” has some atmospheric saxophone, and “Keys” has sounds approximating chirping insects, plus house beats and more saxophones which snake their way around the beat pattern and bassline. The last few tracks are quieter and more piano-centric, with closer “Ring” being all twinkly and starlike. Super impressive release as always from CFCF, it’s always been fascinating to see this guy grow as an artist, and this music is just as awe-inspiring as ever.
Glitch-heavy noise which combines laptop processing with self-built analog modular synthesizer. Strikes a nice balance between Mego-style abrasive digital noise and old-school synthesizer artists like Morton Subotnick, and shows that there’s not much essentially difference between the two. Most importantly, these guys sound like they’re having fun, creating weird squishy buzzy noises and letting them play off each other. Hard to really pick favorite tracks, they’re all fun and crazy, but opener “Landing” seems to sum up the mission statement of the album in 4 minutes, and “World On A Wire” starts out kind of dark and doomy and goes completely haywire, scrambling and combusting and leaving harmful radioactive substances everywhere. Closer “Archaea” is almost minimal compared to the rest of the album, only lasting 3 minutes and focusing more on quieter tones in the beginning and soupier, liquid sounds before shorting out at the end.
Haven’t heard much from this guy in a while, but he released a few albums on Edgetone during the mid ’00s. Supposedly he works with modified drum machines and processing devices, but it definitely doesn’t sound like any type of music you’d normally associate with a drum machine. There’s rhythms, sometimes even beats and bass, but not used in a conventional sense at all. Very exploratory and minimal. Feels sort of crushed and fractured, and with lots of murky underwater sounds. A title like “Still Life Of Dust Motes” fits perfectly; it sounds like field reordings of miniature, household things, but it’s all electronic. “Stitches And Mends” has a bit of a melody threading its way over a drone bed, and “Your Pulsating Little World” has an even more broken melody shuddering its way on top of more ominous droning, and it’s quite beautiful. As the album’s title suggests, it’s all about sleep, falling in and out of consciousness, dreams, and isolation from the rest of the world, and as such I’ve been listening to this a lot while trying to get to sleep, or while waking up in the middle of the night, and it complements that perfectly. Available at Bandcamp.
Congo Natty is one of the original junglists, starting his career in the late ’80s making ragga hip-hop and hip-house as Rebel MC, then playing a big part in creating the jungle genre, releasing hundreds of 12″s under several pseudonyms including Conquering Lion, Lion Of Judah, Tribe Of Issachar, and X Project. He’s truly an artist that sticks to his vision, not just in his unwavering devotion to Rastafarianism, but also by being fiercely independent and releasing most of his music on his own Congo Natty label, and associated labels. Which makes this album a bit of a surprise, not just because there haven’t been any Congo Natty releases in about 7 years (unless Discogs is incorrect or I’m reading it wrong), but because he’s releasing a collaboration-heavy, highly produced album on a big label (Ninja Tune sublabel Big Dada). His older 12″s were more lo-fi, seemingly bashed out, pressed to dubplate and released. This album contains 10 tracks featuring several well-known ragga MCs (“UK Allstars” alone features General Levy, Tippa Irie, Top Cat, Tenor Fly and Daddy Freddy), plus live guitar, horns, bass, etc. Plus Adrian Sherwood mixed it! As far as the songs, lyrically there’s not too much that will surprise anyone familiar with reggae or dancehall, and especially ragga-jungle. Lots of burning babylon, lots of bumbaclaat, lots of talk about revolution. The tracks are mostly uptempo jungle/drum’n’bass, with plenty of chopped up breaks but generally a cleaner, more produced sound common to modern drum’n’bass, as opposed to the grimy lo-fi sound of the genre’s early days. A few songs (“Revolution”, “Nu Beginningz”, “London Dungeons” which obviously has nothing to do with the Misfits, “Micro Chip (Say No)”) dip into lower dubstep-ish tempos. Not that I’m accusing a pioneer of latching onto a current trend, but it definitely sounds closer to what’s happening now than what he was doing 20 years ago. It’s definitely closer to dubstep than classic dub. But even saying that, it manages to sound more genuine than trendy. The vocals do get a little annoying and the lyrics to get a bit cliche-heavy for this genre, but there’s some cool moments. “Jah Warriors” starts by predictably sampling The Warriors, a film I’ve heard sampled, referenced and parodied so many times that I don’t ever need to actually watch the film, but it goes into some breakbeats that are closer to early ’90s breakbeat hardcore than what most drum’n’bass producers are doing now, and goes into some really hard smashing breaks later on, and I’m always in favor of that. As with most current reggae, there’s a lot of autotune on a couple tracks (“Jungle Is I And I”, “Micro Chip (Say No)” which also has children’s voices chanting “Jah, Rastafari”). A decent album, but definitely has the air of a crossover LP. The stuff this guy was doing in the early to mid ’90s still packs much more of a punch than this album.
I just reviewed Constellation Tatsu’s current batch of tapes, but I still have a ton of older releases stretching back to last fall that I keep meaning to post about, because they’re incredible too. This one is credited as a split, but it doesn’t seem as if each artist has created tracks independently of each other, it looks like more of a collaboration. The 5 tracks on this tape have waves of static and storm sounds, lots of wind and rain, and some heartbreaking drones. Kind of feels like standing out in the freezing, pouring rain and wind, but somehow in a romantic way. Frigid and blustery, but still with plenty of life to it. “Continuum” ends with some gliding MBV-like bent waves, except it sounds more like an organ than guitar, or most likely both combined. “Unearthing The Past” has a bit of a pulse and even a sort of bassline, and sheets of guitar feedback. “Darkness Shall Cover The Earth” couldn’t possibly end up on a bright note, and so it ends up smothering everything in static until there’s nothing left to smother.
The Answer Is In The Beat 