The Answer Is In The Beat

Fear-E: Mechanical Music for Brighter Days (Dark Entries, 2021)

September 6, 2021 at 1:34 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Glasgow’s Fear-E provides music to cruise down a neon-lit motorway into a brighter tomorrow. The techno tracks are strong and functional, with “Escape From the Hive” having a buzzy rave edge to it and “New Cycles” providing some Axis/M-Plant-style energy. But the electro tracks are where he truly excels. “D10S” glides down the fast lane with snapping snares and arpeggiated horsepower, with micro-edits and DJ tricknology ensuring that the track never settles into autopilot. “Gladiator Rhythm” is a galactic sprint which splashes a drop of lush house vocals into the spin cycle. There’s also some pounding, squiggly acid with “Tinfoil Hat”, which has a delightful way of sounding both spontaneous and tightly focused.

The Red Microphone: And I Became of the Dark (ESP-Disk’, 2021)

September 5, 2021 at 7:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Bringing together a few veterans of the downtown NYC jazz scene as well as co-producer Ivan Julian (Richard Hell & the Voidoids) and poet John Pietaro, the newest Red Microphone album on ESP-Disk’ recalls the freak-rock acts of the label’s early history as well as various jazz and creative music ensembles from throughout the eras. “Revenge of the Atom Spies” definitely morphs from bongo-driven psychedelic beat music to freewheeling violin, sax, guitar, and drum solos. “Blue” is a jazz poem with raw, feverish instrumentation backing the clear-cut yet sometimes highly spirited words about some of the biggest legends of the genre. “Burroughs Inferno” is more about a sizzling night at a jazz club than its title suggests, but it does allude to the author’s likeness. “When Reagan Was Bad” is a vicious reminder that horrors of the past half-decade were foreshadowed by the former B-movie star who sat in the Oval Office during most of the ’80s. Finally, “Viva La Quince Brigade” is a timely update of a popular protest anthem from the Spanish Civil War.

Lockbox: Spiritual Malware (Primordial Void, 2021)

August 29, 2021 at 5:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Hausu Mountain alumni Lockbox (Jesse Briata) found a new home at Primordial Void a few years ago, and his latest opus is 22 tracks and 78 minutes of adventurous, intricately crafted electronics, with some selections composed using the E-mu Modular System at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Still as trippy and playful as his past work, this altogether feels more defined. The styles flow from analog IDM to epic techno to deconstructed club (just hear the jumpy “Syber”), all logically flowing from the same headspace. “Juice Spiral” starts with gurgly Bogdan Raczynski pitch-altered vocals over stiff but chilled-out beats, which ride out for nearly 10 minutes. There’s other extended tracks like that one, but Briata recognizes the value in immediacy. “Spoilers” is a short burst of high-speed cool-toned IDM, “Aon Centre” is brisk sunshiney techno, and “Biocontainment Unit” is clean and precise bio-rave. A few moments are a little looser and more meandery, but there’s still a spike of dream energy to them. “Mommy” is a funtime junglist breakcore choon, but I can detect at least a little bit of longing for simpler times buried inside all the neon break choppage. By the end, we’ve drifted away from in-the-moment rave excitement and we’re floating in a heat-resistant bubble up in the sky.

Mankwe Ndosi and Body MemOri: felt/not said (Auspice NOW, 2021)

August 28, 2021 at 12:25 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Twin Cities-based performer and Black Earth Ensemble member Mankwe Ndosi uses her voice in a truly boundless manner, stretching beyond the confines of human language and functioning as a musical instrument as well as a vessel that channels unknown forces. On this album, she’s joined by the incomparable Tomeka Reid (cello), Silvia Bolognesi (contrabass), and Davu Seru (drums/percussion), and she navigates her way through their winding improvisations. The tracks on this album have Lovesliescrushing-esque titles like “backmouthfindingpulse” and “underinside climbing”, and while they sound nothing like ethereal shoegaze noise, they subvert musical elements in a similar way, blurring sounds into a flow of exploratory feelings. At times, Ndosi sounds like she’s singing backwards, or the music is driving her to physically pull strange, uncomfortable sounds from out of her. It’s challenging but fulfilling as a singular expression of creative urges.

Viktor Timofeev: Palace of Peace and Reconciliation LP/Live at No Moon (Lo Bit Landscapes, 2021)

August 27, 2021 at 8:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Viktor Timofeev is a Latvian sound artist who has worked with avant-rock group Nihiti and the Quantum Natives digital collective in the past. This is the follow-up to a 2011 LP he released on Lo Bit Landscapes, and was originally supposed to come out in 2016, but is only seeing the light of day now. Palace of Peace and Reconciliation is the LP half of this vinyl/CD release, and it flows between digital confusion, post-rock melancholy and poetic emptiness. After two continuous pieces of noise, heart-searing guitars, and GPS-type voices, “Portal of Zin 1” is a chilling ambient drone-out. “Portal of Accord” takes up most of the second side, and it veers between black metal growling, fragile glitch, and washes of electrified noise and rushing synths. Just when it seems like it’s cooling down, it ruptures as it slides into “Portal of Zin 2”, an almost cathedral-like convergence of stained light and heavy organ (even if it isn’t actually an organ). The companion CD is a live recording that charts a different course than the album itself. Here, he plays with overdriven cheap drum machines and nightmarish distortion, not quite screaming his brains out but casting it outward with delay. Sounding half improvised and half drawn into a trance, the low fidelity makes the set sound a bit playful, but it’s filled with ghostly melodies which rush out and drift, rendering it both haunting and exhilarating. “Mi Sky” is a bit of a curveball, with Timofeev looping his voice and skittering, shooting vibrations so that he sounds irritated, then ramping up into power electronics-like feedback bursts. “Omna” starts off as a high-speed thrill ride which sounds like Lightning Bolt taking control of a drum machine, then is driven by this sort of radioactive Buddha voice, occasionally shaken by loud crashes. “Ruka” has more of a Black Dice-esque way of contorting manic voices and toy drum machines. “Eracing” runs free for a bit but mostly gets caught in the glare of the sun. Tracks 7 through 98 are all silent, then 99 is a Colin Marston remix of the LP track “Portal of Zin 1”. It’s a dark chasm transmission filled with wrong number disconnections, demonic slithering, and finally the stunned reaction of the sight of a world that’s withering away.

Disheveled​/​Spednar: split LP (Thac0 Records, 2021)

August 26, 2021 at 11:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest release on long-running Pittsburgh breakcore label Thac0 Records contains 4 tracks each by 2 artists I haven’t listened to before, but they’ve both released music on labels I’m familiar with. Anyway, Disheveled does some really impressive broken rhythms and short-circuiting shards with secret voices piping in at key moments. “Sentient Meat” is more untethered than the more rhythmic tracks and I think I actually enjoy it the most, but there’s no denying the unpredictable pattern shifts and jagged tones of tracks like the well-titled “Datasploshing”. Spednar’s music feels like it’s falling apart if you’re expecting consistent rhythm, but at the same time it’s so composed and deliberate. There’s a sort of molten flow to it, and then it progresses into an accelerating eruption during the climax of “fjs”. “000831_0002_3” has wiry analog textures swirling around heavy, distorted bass throbs. Then “smhsfn” is a short bit of sideways techno for crabs to dance to.

Mitchell Keaney: Head, Gut, Heart LP (Gilgongo, 2021)

August 25, 2021 at 9:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Brooklyn’s Mitchell Keaney recorded each of the pieces on his debut LP in a single take. They juxtapose slowly evolving minimalist electronic patterns with passages of poetry, and all are meant to evoke different listening states related to parts of the body. “Head” begins with clipped patterns that slowly expand and build outward, somewhat like Mark Fell but gradually this seems to reach a much freer state with its repetition; this doesn’t feel as academic or acrobatic. Eventually a beat anchors the patterns, but it’s in such an obtuse time signature that no DJ could logically mix it into a club set. “Gut” is split over both sides of the vinyl, and it has much sharper, stabbier tones at first, then a more forceful evolution during the second part, with the pace seeming to speed up contract. Throughout, it drops out for brief poems recited by Inky Lee, which express a loneliness and longing that the music itself doesn’t let show, or let itself be affected by. “Heart” starts out more minimal and with the album’s clearest tones, and eventually has a more pronounced beat, but it’s also erratic and doubles back and twists around at will.

Jeremiah Cymerman: Citadels & Sanctuaries (5049 Records, 2021)

August 24, 2021 at 9:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

New York clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman’s latest album consists of ten pieces, each dedicated to a composer which made a crucial impact on his development as a musician. He describes it as a “coming of age” album, as it coincides with his 40th birthday. Recorded at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, there’s a resonant space to these recordings, and while the first piece seems to bask in that space, he cuts through it with some of the harsher pieces. He has a commanding presence which still seems to emerge from ether. “Spheres of Humanity (for Alvin Lucier)” takes you by surprise in how abrasive it gets, and “The Absolute and Its Tearing (for Horațiu Rădulescu)” is much more shrill and piercing, eventually becoming more jarring through electronic processing effects. By contrast, pieces like “Broken Language (For Morton Feldman)” and “Knot of Breath (for Mario Diaz de Léon)” are both icy and vaporous. “With the Old Breed (for Nate Wooley)” is a brief flush of noise that seems to be clearing something out from the artist’s system. “Manifesto (for Iancu Dumitrescu)” is a much longer piece which seems intent on droning in a straight line at first, but then ends up becoming jagged and noisy. “Conscious Faith (for Evan Parker)” has some sharp vibrations as well as some metallic clangs reflecting throughout the space. Cymerman’s own personality is evident throughout the album, but the dedications make it easier to dissect his influences.