July 7, 2021 at 6:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Rian Treanor: Obstacle Scattering EP
Rian Treanor continues piling up rhythms like Jenga pieces until they come close to toppling over but somehow don’t on his
newest EP. “Obstacle 1” is a high-speed footwork rhythm that gets stuck in mid-air several times and manages to work itself out without breaking a sweat. “Obstacle 2” is far more destructive, and actually does end up sounding like someone poured kerosene all over Aphex Twin’s gear. “Obstacle 3” is much friendlier and shinier, and even with its slightly zipped-up pace and angular beat patterns, it’s still consistent enough to dance to. “Obstacle 4”, is gnomes attempting to topple a lamp post over with enlarged aluminum bats while shooting firecrackers, and it would be unnecessarily cruel to try and subject a packed club to it. I would be laughing my ass off, though.
July 6, 2021 at 7:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Joy on Fire: Another Adventure in Red
New Jersey-based
Joy on Fire play energized, exploratory pieces which might scan as jazz or progressive rock, but also draw from punk and new wave. 12-minute opener “Another Adventure In Red” starts out with melodies that might recall John Coltrane and Joe Jackson, then it flows into a long, drawn-out spacey section. (There’s a radio edit at the end of the disc, if you just want to cut to the catchy part). The band introduce dulcimer on the fluttery, atmospheric “After”, keeping it for 2 brief interludes. “3rd Grade Fire” is the longest track, at almost 15 minutes, but it feels rawer and more garage-y than the rest of the album, even if it’s closer to jammy jazz-rock than garage rock. “Night Sticks” is the other vocal-driven song (other than “After”), and another venture into jazzy yet gritty progressive rock.
July 5, 2021 at 10:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Prolaps: Ultra Cycle Pt. 2: Estival Growth
of four quarterly Prolaps releases this year is basically the second part of an 8-hour marathon rave. The first hour of this tape is a constant barrage of kick drums and breaks battering over each other, with possessed voices beaming in from another k-hole on tracks like “The Endless Lizard”. There’s shorter tracks and others that pass 10 minutes, but they all rush together and cycle through different patterns at will. The tempo drops a little for “Bottom Out”, but the electro beats plus smashing Amens are still relentless. Later it flows into a more alien space, with a bit more of an energy field surrounding the rhythms, more open atmosphere. It goes through periods of getting more cluttered and ravey and then more detached, then piling the breaks back on like dumping a barrel full of live crabs in a tank. The closing “Saviorself” is a staggering crawl through a radioactive wasteland that you had no clue you were in for when you entered the dance two hours earlier.
July 3, 2021 at 10:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Thugwidow: Post Modern
Prolific modern junglist’s
newest EP on Sneaker Social Club has a renegade spirit as well as a heart. The tracks all have crisp, heavy breaks as well as elastic bass which divebombs and performs almost acrobatic feats. “Invisible Shell of Energy” is a standout, with more atmospheric pads, a slower tempo, and an intro sample about unity. The track itself isn’t exactly melancholy but it has more of a reflective vibe, soaking in the all-together-as-one vibe rather than shouting in ecstasy. “The Sacrifice” is harder, rougher ragga-tinged jungle with crushing breaks and bass that absolutely plummets to the depths. “The Voices Beneath the Earth” is more breakbeat hardcore, but it also feels like it’s reaching downward and summoning something deep under the crust.
June 30, 2021 at 7:25 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ben Miller: Ben Miller’s Room
Last year, avant-rock legend Ben Miller (Destroy All Monsters, Sproton Layer) recorded a
monthly podcast series, with each episode being around 10 minutes of stream-of-consciousness prose, narration, foley, sound design, and music, mostly excerpted from recordings of Miller’s various projects in the past. Basically, they seem like brief one-man radio plays. Miller introduces many of them by informally welcoming you into his room, then he proceeds to talk your ear off about mysteries and mysterious people, ending many of them with a reminder of when the next episode was scheduled to premiere. The first part is about a government worker named Cody, and after hearing four pieces about him, I can’t quite tell if I’m closer to understanding who he is, but maybe that’s not the point. Miller’s enthusiasm for storytelling is what drives these mini-dramas, and his homemade way of processing voices and adding sound effects (typing keyboards, squealing modems) adds lots of charm and keeps the pieces busy and constantly moving. The title to the second part,
Mystery of the Useless Clues, tips you off that its contents are filled with lots of dead ends and non-sequiturs, but there’s some intriguing descriptions of bar scenes accompanied by passages of dusky jazz pieces on part 1. The second part incorporates music a bit more into the narrative, from Miller’s own lopsided singing to bebop playing on the radio. From there, it just keeps getting trippier and more mysterious. Finally,
On the Brink, a saga about a character named Hoss, might have the most hallucinatory, Firesign-ish sound design — Miller even goes “whew, that was topsy-turvy” at the end of part 2. At the end of part 4, Miller says “One day, Hoss remembered something… but that was another story”, which feels like the jump off for even more escapades.
June 25, 2021 at 6:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
MJ Linderman: Ghost of Your Guitar Solo
MJ Lenderman’s
second solo album is a glorious bum-out session, filled with both minor gripes and major life ponderings, all of which add up to a serious questioning of what any of this even means and does it even matter. Constructed from a series of daily writing exercises, the songs are mostly pretty short, expressing simple yet significant statements of regret through blown-out lo-fi wattage. The opening title track is by far the longest, and it actually is mostly a guitar solo until the end. Among the brief, sour slowcore laments like “Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain”, there’s comparatively upbeat ones like “Inappropriate”, or “Infinity Pool”, which I guess only sounds less bummed out because of its thumping drum machine and watery guitar effects. Songs without distortion, like the stark, arid “Catholic Priest”, are almost too uneasy to bear. A shorter, spacier “Ghost of Your Guitar Solo II” provides a short break to reflect and ease the pain. Of the two versions of the song “Jack”, which puts in perspective our individual places on this planet, the album-ending “Live Jack” is angstier, rougher, and more electrified.
June 24, 2021 at 8:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Evolfo: Site Out of Mind
I haven’t listened to much Tame Impala, but they’re still the first thing I thought of when I put this on. Opening track “Give Me Time” is filled with trippy vocals and heavy, thwacky drums that could easily be sampled as hip-hop breakbeats. As the track goes on, however, the vocals disappear, and it gets stranger, more acid-fried, and more mystical, with melodies that might be inspired by Ethio-jazz. “Strange Lights” is a more revved-up Osees-type garage rocker, but feels a little more restrained. “Zuma Loop” seems more calmed down at first, but it slowly simmers, pondering “what a dream life can be”. “Drying Out Your Eyes” is another psych-pop gem with a tight rhythm and echo-scattered vocal hooks, ending up with a brief spaced-out exploration that nearly sounds like a theremin. The 3-part “In Time” and a few other tracks have their proggy moments, yet there’s also time to unwind and reflect with tracks like “Let Go”. There’s some decent songs here, but the production and the array of directions they explore are what make the album interesting.
June 23, 2021 at 7:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Bart Hawkins: Vision of Eden
I just mistyped this guy’s name as Nart Jawkins, and I really like that, I need to remember it and use it for something. Anyway, this is extremely starry ambient drone mainly created on a modular synth, but with a much warmer, more immersive feel than most modular recordings. “Garden of Grace” is overlaid with the sounds of children on a playground, and it sounds like there’s a cello being bowed, but I guess somehow it’s a modular synth? “Orbital Eccentricity” also has thick layers of wind-through-trees drifting textures, as well as some sharper buzzing, and some detached pulsations underneath. “Sidewinder” has the only additional instrumentation, which comes in the form of guitar prepared with forks and spoons between the strings, causing jittery vibrations which resonate among the breathing, serpentine synth layers. “Descent Into the Forbidden Fruit” is a mesmerizing, unexpectedly dark drone which gets more revved up and noisy than the other pieces. “Dragonfly Speaks” seems to fizz and smolder like deeply burnt embers, but otherwise it’s one of the brightest and most tranquil pieces here.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 