Here we have the newest EP from Atlanta based Deerhunter (which is also available on lp, along with their previous highly praised full length album Cryptograms). Deerhunter have two lines of thought diverging in their music that has and will continue to afford them acclaim from across the board. The EP's opener and namesake "Fluorescent Grey" starts out a deeply textural indie rock song trudging along with a simple piano line and nearly over-annunciated boy/girl vocals that would make their junior-high chorus director smile until he or she realizes that the subject of the song is that of a body decomposing. Halfway through the song, the structured pitter-patter converges into the psych-drone noise rock madness people raved about when first heard on the band's previous release. The EP's other tracks build in the same pattern with one only hinting at eruption, while the other's noised out bliss explodes in a way that suggests they've embraced comparisons to Sonic Youth. The third track stands alone as the second line of thought the band seems to be toying with - experimental shoe-gaze in the style of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless saturated in all manner of ethereal noise. Highly recommended!
As the opening sun soaked moments of Halcyon Digest begin, we kind of immediately knew we were in for a special outing by Deerhunter. They really haven't made a misstep yet, but this is a record that finds them reaching new levels of excellence. They have found this incredible way of crafting songs that can transport you into a daydream, whisk you into a bubbly underwater world of warm sound, and then hit you so spot on with timeless pop melodies, which swirl with an effortless delight. The record is paced so perfectly that just when you think you're going to get all dazed and wasted a new song will come up with rushing hooks and irresistible melodies, but then once you're afraid of getting a sonic sweet tooth cavity, new layers and textures come and take you to a breezier and more haunting destination. Feels like they've been digging lots of Velvet Underground, Chapterhouse, and the most stoney moments of Built To Spill. The album flows so fantastically from beginning to end that we've found ourselves deeply hooked. Our favorite Deerhunter record yet!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Due to a little thing called the inter-webs (we've never heard of it), the tracks for Deerhunter's long-awaited follow-up to last years much loved Cryptograms were prematurely leaked. So to give us cd buyers more bang for their buck, they recorded an EXTRA full length, called Weird Era Continued, and released the two discs together for a single disc price. Very nice of them! This time around they fused their pop sensibilities and their more experimental hazy dronescape leanings together into songs that recall the best of classic 4AD shimmer with sixties wall of sound pop. There isn't too much difference between the two records, but the song-writing is strong enough and the production nuanced enough to keep our attention through both. While we might have liked some more spacier instrumental moments like the ones found on Cryptograms, it seems Bradford Cox has begun to channel his more experimental side into his other project, Atlas Sound, where it is actually better suited. Still this is pretty damn solid!
If two albums released at the same time (Microcastle/Weird Era Continued) wasn't enough Deerhunter for you, then here are five more hazy gliding pop gems for your pleasure! More rocking with less sheen, Bradford Cox and the boys seem to be channeling classic-era Breeders with sharp songwriting and satisfyingly shimmering pop hooks. Perfect Summer Listening!
"No, Def Leppard don't suck. Their first few albums are pretty great." So we said in a postscript to our review of Savage's Loose 'N Lethal last time. Well let's put our money where our mouth is, and do what we do here, which is write about music we like, dammit. So, here's Def Leppard's 1980 debut, On Through The Night. Despite the most ridiculous "space truckin'" cover art, and Def Leppard's eventual commercial hair metal success-to-excess trajectory, this is a kick ass album. A bona fide NWOBHM classic. Not over produced and over cheesed like some of their later million sellers. Though definitely pro and polished, heavier than you'd expect, and full on rockin', right out of the gate with the anthemic call to arms "Rock Brigade". Next up is the prescient "Hello America", Def Leppard dreaming big, some keyboard synths creeping in... but they're just an embellishment on that one song alone, as there's plenty of guitar riffage to go around on this disc! Lotsa snakey licks, some slide on the big beat of "It Don't Matter". Yeah, on and on through the night you'll hear Def Lep's six stringers Steve Clark (R.I.P.) and Pete Willis duking it out over Rick Savage's bass lines and the solid (two-armed, at the time) drumming of Rick Allen. While wailing over it all are the distinctive, nasally pipes of Joe Elliott (hmm, he's credited here with "throat" just like HR in the Bad Brains).
As the NWOBHM did, Def Leppard take the '70s sounds of British arena rockers like Led Zep and UFO and inject some new vitality and purpose. Youthful energy and all that. And they had learned their lessons well. (It took a few albums into the '80s before they fully fumbled the torch they'd been passed.) There's some mellower, melancholic moments (parts of "Sorrow Is A Woman", of course, ferinstance) but nothing like a ballad, this is mostly a headbanging good time with flashes of royal majesty.
A few further comments on this record: the Leps continue to prophesize their own impending fame with the cheering crowd mixed in on the urgent "Rocks Off". And "Answer To The Master" is just a classic heavy metal song title ain't it? As is (another prophecy?) "Wasted"...
We found a handful of titles, maybe only 5 or 6 of each, from Aussie label Diagnosis� Don't! We've had these for ages, and odds are these are long gone as they were pretty limited to begin with, but for a few of you, here's your chance to grab one (or all) of these super limited 3" cd-r's.
Default Jamerson is a one man noise making machine from Australia, who crafts a lush and billowy low end, all deep whirling tones, thick speaker shredding dronemusic, even with the bass dialed all the way back, this single 20 minute track was sending seismic waves into the room, causing everything to vibrate gloriously. Lots of shifting textures, haunting melodies buried in the mix, the sound murky and muddy and underwater, woozy and warbly and totally hypnotic. Definitely bummed we slept on this. And bummed that only a handful of you will get to hear it. But what can you do? Heavy low end drone freaks should try to snag one while they can...
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. And again, we only have a VERY FEW of these....
Love him or hate him, you've gotta admire Gene Defcon's full-on party mission. Really! 47 songs (71 minutes total) for and about whooping it up with your pals! At times, sounding like songs that could have been on the Revenge Of The Nerds soundtrack. Indeed, Gene Defcon Olympia's party king seems determined to get all the sullen indie kids out of their Barlow lows, and into their boogie shoes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
About two hundred miles north east of Chicago lies the town of Livonia, Michigan - the home of Warn (Warren) Defever (who you may have heard in such bands as His Name Is Alive and Princess Dragon Mom). While members of the Chicago "avantgarde" have been mimicking John Fahey of late, this Livonian takes on the tradition represented by the Anthology of American Folk Music box set by writing antiquated folk songs complete with really shitty production (which is ALL treble) and an excessive amount of fake surface noise to add to the "authenticity" of the record. While DeFever's songwriting on this isn't quite at the level reached by the best of HNIA's 'pop' songs, this is still quite quite an amusingly divergent take on the alt.country phenomenon.
Another solo outing from the magical mind behind His Name Is Alive. This time Warn recorded in a cold garage in Livonia, MI. One can almost see him bundled up with his guitar and piano amid a mass of old rusty car parts... with some of the rust actually rubbing off on the hand-stamped and typed cd insert. Fragile, precarious melodies and some moments of rough raucousness strain through varying levels of lo-fi. Includes covers of Bad Brains' "Rock For Light" and Hendrix's "I Don't Live Today".
Unlike the primitive American black metal ususally found on Killjoy's Baphomet label, this dometic debut from this Japanese band fits better into the technical, brutal death metal scene, a la Cryptopsy and Gorguts -- but with more of an old school, metal feel
Only got three of these, found a little stash in the closet, pretty sure we won't be able to get more so grab one of these quick if you're into twisted Ukrainian black metal. And really how could you not be. The Ukraine has a small but killer scene that's given us bands like Drudkh, Nokturnal Mortum, Astrofaes, Hate Forest, Khors, Shadows Ground and Blood Of Kingu. And weirdly enough, Definition Sane features the drummer of BoK, but their sound is a whole different beast. This comp collects the group's two demos, the sound murky and moody, buzzy and black, melding depressive and ambient elements with more classic buzz and blast, and there's a definite technical death metal element too (they even cover Deicide!), but at its core, it's a fantastically twisted blackness, not sure whether it's the composition or the recording, but the sound is warped and warbly, with the sound constantly shifting into weirdly atonal and angular parts that make the sound more ugly and damaged and 'difficult' than most black metal. It also gives the sound a sort of 'avant' vibe, which when coupled with the overall grim sound, makes for something pretty ruling.
Again, we only have three of these, and once they're gone, that's it...
Swedish thrashers Defleshed, whose previous disc Under The Blade was one of the ragin'est, catchiest, most METAL releases of '98, return with an equally fierce followup, the aptly titled Fast Forward! Energetic speed/death metal with no guitar solos. Like a buzzsaw to your skull, guaranteed to induce violent headbanging. Great songtitles abound: "The Iron And The Maiden", "Feeding Fatal Fairies", "Domination Of The Sub-Queen", "Lightning Strikes Thrice", "Snowballing Blood"...
Also includes two bonus live cuts.
The hyper-caffienated trio of Swedish thrashers known as Defleshed return with this, their fourth studio effort, and again whip up a storm of headbanging heaviness -- 32 minutes of aggressive old-school metal mania. While their insidiously catchy 1998 masterpiece "Under The Blade" is their best release, fans may find "Royal Straight Flesh" a blast, more-or-less literally. This is more of a drilling grind, still bereft of time-wasting guitar solos, but mostly without the staggering hooks of "Under The Blade". Yet is is every bit as energetic and powerful, which counts for something! And at points we're reminded of recent Immortal output, which is also no bad thing.
One of 1998's best metal releases gets a digipak reissue with a multitude of bonus tracks! Harkening back to '80s thrash masters Destruction (whose "Curse The Gods" gets covered here), this hyper- andrenalized Swedish power trio somehow created what might
Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the ancient Greek god of fire and metal. Also, the title of a 1993 album by skate metal avantgardists Iceburn, one of our faves of theirs that we wish would get reissued. However, THIS Hephaestus has got nothing to do with skate metal, although it is avantgarde. On this experimental drone disc issued by Editions Mego, cellist Arne Deforce's classically acoustic, acoustic classical instrument is subjected to the electronic effects of Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio.
We hadn't heard anything by Deforce before, but there's nothing like cello for creating some seriously dark, doleful atmospheres. And Mika Vainio is Mika Vainio - heck it's not really 'experimental' if he does it, 'cause you know the result will turn out great, right? So what you get here is pretty fantastic, six tracks (whose names all come from the cartography of Greek mythology) of spacious, abstract dronescapes. The first track, "Phlegethon", starts off in subtle stealth mode, quietly haunting, before the cello's drone is distorted into sounding something more like an aircraft engine, rumbling with distortion and feedback - yeah it gets HEAVY, sounding like SUNNO))) or Earth, or even Merzbow. Sudden -boom- explosions of low-end, the volume peaking, add even more dynamism. That's how it goes throughout the disc, there are restrained passages of cinematic near-ambience; and others, wherein the cello sonics are processed into something more fragmented, frazzled, even frightening. You'd think you were listening to a Caspar Brotzmann guitar solo some of the time! Really well done, and recommended.
We love the Deftones. They always seem to get lumped in with all that jockish Warp Tour nu-metal, but sort of like with Tool, there's no good reason and it's so completely off the mark. So try to approach this band, and specifically this record, without all that baggage, and you will be blown away. The Deftones take churning slow burning metal pummel and stir in a healthy dose of Depeche Mode and Cure obsessed brooding moody gloom, and it's such a perfect mix. Check out their record White Pony and you'll know exactly what we mean. This one might be more for already fans, but folks into moody heaviness might really dig this. Especially as the majority of the cd is covers, and they're the sort of covers that will have your high school / outcast goth / smoking section / mixtape self all in a froth. Covers include: Cocteau Twins' "Wax And Wane", the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want", Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur", the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", Sade's "No Ordinary Love", Helmet's "Sinatra", Lynrd Skynrd's "Simple Man", Jawbox's "Savory" as well as a handful of re-recorded originals. So amazing! Also includes a DVD of all the videos as well as a bunch of live stuff and weird old rare footage. Packaged in a gorgeous hardcover book-style sleeve, with tons of liner notes and photos.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's still so confounding to us that anyone into heavy music doesn't love the Deftones. Sure, they may have started life as a nu-metal band, but even then, it was obvious that they were destined for more. And it didn't take long for them to make good on that potential, transforming into a seriously kick ass, brooding avant post metal juggernaut, as capable of whipping out some Slayer-esque riffage, or some downtuned drop-D crunch, as some spare moody electronica flecked slowcore or some blissed out metalgaze. And the fact that they often effortlessly did all of the above simultaneously only made us love them more. Plus you gotta love any band that covers the Cocteau Twins, the Smith, Duran Duran, the Cure, Sade, Helmet, Lynyrd Skynrd and Jawbox. And that should also give you an idea of the sort of sounds that informs the sounds these guys conjure up.
In some ways Diamond Eyes is a bit less experimental than Saturday Night Wrist. That record had some seriously weird shit going on, long tripped out electronic jams with foul mouthed female spoken word, almost like some sort of cold Teutonic electro, mixed with plenty of dark balladic dirges and chugging metallic blow outs. It could be that the proposed follow up, Eros, might have been just as far out, but that record was put on hold indefinitely, as the Deftones bassist is in a coma after an automobile accident. Even so, while the weirdness is maybe not so overt, their sound is so unique anyway, equal parts doomy gothy miserablism, epic melodic bliss pop, and metallic crunch, a combo others have definitely tried, but no one does it quite like these guys. Another killer disc of heaviness and hooks, metal and moodiness, most definitely a new favorite...
This one probably doesn't require too much of a review (and we're not being too timely with it either!), but we might as well start this one the way we started our review of 2010's Diamond Eyes, and say that we STILL don't understand how anyone who digs heavy music doesn't love these guys. Pretty much every record since Around The Fur has been chock full of brooding, moody heaviness, the sound as much beholden to their nu-metal past as the Cure and Depeche Mode, and somehow the weird fusion of metal and moody pop has transformed into a super unique sound, one that almost everyone we know, metalheads included LOVE. When this record came out, a procession of aQ friends and customers, came in, called, emailed, all SO excited about a new Deftones record. And we're talking weirdo music nerds, metalheads, pop kids...
And like Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan is another killer, heavy as hell, crazy catchy, super atmospheric, the sound massive, the production HUGE, and with some of the best songs in ages. "Romantic Dreams", is so poppy it's almost criminal that's it's not all over the radio. Then there's "Poltergeist", with it's weird hand clap breakdown and soaring chorus. There's also plenty of the Deftones slower doom poppy dirges, which still sound amazing. Fuck it, fans are gonna want this, haters oughta give the samples a listen, you might be surprised. For all the weird black buzz and dense drones and hooky indie rock and heavy psych we've been digging, odds are this may very well end up being the record some of us listen to most...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So, knowing full well that I am impervious to any mockery, having weathered plenty with my past admissions (Tool, Fastway, Warlord, Bad News), I will stand tall, and say that the new Deftones record is amazing. Maybe even better than their last record, 'Around The Fur', 'White Pony' puts the Deftones even more safely apart from the 'nu-metal' crowd they are often (and unfairly) lumped in with. Sure, there's the occasional Rage-Against-The-Machine-isms, but that's not so bad (we all loved the Refused record which bordered on RATM territory) and this record is just fucking great. Heavy and weird and catchy and dark, and sometimes slow and creepy (their admitted Depeche Mode obsession is in full effect). Plus some guest vocals from Tool frontman Maynard, make for the best Tool song that never was. Fucking essential.
God, I love the Deftones. I can't help it. And why should I even try? I've proudly proclaimed it in the past and I will continue to do so. Their records strike this perfect balance between thunderous, skull crushing heaviness and heartbreaking, soul shattering lovliness. Sweet, wispy melodies flit delicately between falling slabs of impossibly heavy sound, downtuned guitars spew molten rivers of roiling riffs and frothing feedback, Chino Moreno's gorgeous velvety croon, wraps itself lovingly around your head, filling your ears with warm melodic gauze before exploding into a banshee-like wail and splitting your skull into a thousand pieces. Crushing metallic dirges dissipate into drone-y, whirring soundscapes of hushed, almost whispered vocals and delicate, crystalline melodies. So perfect.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Earlier this year, Chris Degiere presented a surprisingly comedic / theatrical performance at the "Six String Object" show for guitars tricked out with laptop processing. Degiere had rigged up his PDA to register the scribbling of stylus upon its face as its electro-acoustic equivalent. Matched with his permanently goofy grin and some crowd pleasing, uptempo IDM abstractions, Degiere's gimmickery did what few have been able to do -- make a laptop concert an event that was entertaining to watch. As he has also claimed allegiance to generative music and compositional indeterminancy, Degiere seemed poised for something interesting. His debut recording, while pleasant in its own right, is somewhat lacking in those sensationalist applications of electronics he alluded to earlier. This 10" on lovely blue vinyl is full of ambient-techno pleasantries with soupy stoner electronics and thickly rounded basslines topping post-Boards of Canada rhythmic preciousness. Compositional indetereminancy? Do you really want to hear that with your Boards of Canada wistfulness? Probably not.
Soul Coughing's sampler operator DeGliAntoni debut solo disc of sampler experimentation, a bit farther out than the pop of his main band, "drawing upon instrumental trip-hop, cartoon music and minimalism."
When you think 'death metal' you probably think Deicide. Or Morbid Angel. Or at least you should. The two bands that basically define modern death metal (without sucking). While Morbid Angel twist death metal into weird shapes and sprinke it liberally with
Beefy Satanic dude death metal. Another in a long line of blasting blasphemies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is a single hour long track, an improvised soundtrack to a 1930 Carl Dreyer film. Turkish drum, electronics, guitar and powerbook. Very spare and ambient with lots of room sound, clicks and clatter, the sound of people laughing (at the film we would
Guess we couldn't help but weigh in on the most discussed album so far this year. Now, we are not normally swayed by massive hype, but we admit to be quite taken early on by the sudden appearance of her two big singles, "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans", songs that seemed to marry dead end Hollywood glamor, with a jaded detachment and torchsong doom, the music either swathed in descending minor key hip hop beats, or orchestral string sections, sometimes both. Lynchian affinities naturally spread, as well as comparisons to both Amy Winehouse and Scott Walker. In the mainstream pop sphere, there was nothing quite like this.
Now the album is finally here, and while it doesn't completely live up to the promise of the singles, it -nearly- does. But we don't feel the problem with the record relates to any of the bafflingly contentious debate that has plagued the singer in recent months (we won't go into that here, as it's been well gone over in the mainstream music press). But rather it's the unexpected RnB Diva side to Del Rey that we have yet to encounter in her videos, that has thrown us off. Sung in a higher register with a blunted hip-hop swagger, songs like "Day at The Races", "National Anthem" and "Diet Mountain Dew", though not really that bad on their own (they're catchy as hell, but not sure if that's a good thing), don't quite jive with the persona the singer has so carefully crafted with "Video Games", creating a jarring schism within the flow of the record.
But still, this is a better record than most mainstream pop, and we'd rather hear this (or have the kids listen to it) more than the new Madonna record or anything by Lady Gaga. Say what you will about fake personas, Del Rey at least doesn't come across as some corporate schill, Diet Mountain Dew notwithstanding.
It's been a long time since we've heard a full on solo outing from Del. When he first hit the scene in the early '90s he really helped ignite the renaissance of West Coast underground hip-hop which would soon spawn the likes of Jurassic 5, Souls Of Mischief, Dilated Peoples and Blackalicious. While it's been about 8 years since Del released his first solo joint, he's been keeping busy collaborating with Dan The Automator and Kid Koala for the awesome Deltron 3030 project, as well as doing guest spots for the Gorillaz.
Eleventh Hour is a really nice return to form for Del. His first outing for Def Jux flows so sweet as his beats and rhymes come out so effortlessly and with flair. While so many modern day hip-hop albums boast only few good songs amid so much filler and tired skits, it's so nice to hear a record that is super strong from start to finish. Fresh for '08!
OK folks, here it is, the soundtrack to the indie flick all the kids are talkin' 'bout. The film score was written by Tim Delaughter and performed by The Polyphonic Spree (who are sounding more and more like a children's choir with each passing day) which is a treat unto itself, but scattered throughout are three songs by the late Elliott Smith which only make the proceedings that much more heartbreaking (two previously unreleased covers of Big Star's "Thirteen" and Cat Stevens' "Trouble" as well as the track "Let's Get Lost" from Smith's last album From A Basement On A Hill). Somehow none of us have seen the film yet, but we can confirm that the soundtrack on its own swings you from carefree'n'feelgood to to dreamily contemplative to heartaches'n'bummers and back again. It all culminates in a lengthy (30-minute long) pastoral instrumental and finally a joyous reprise of Polyphonic's "Move Away And Shine".
As many of our favorite records have demonstrated, music is where you find it, anywhere, and more often than not, the most amazing sounds are waiting to be found where one might not always look. In the past we've had straight up field recordings of drag races, a life support machine, barking sled dogs, rutting deer, cowbells in the alps... We've also had the microscopic captured vibrations of Tsunoda, the voices from beyond of the Ghost Orchid, the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb, and we could go on and on.�
Some adventurous listeners/recordists have set their sights on the sounds BETWEEN the sounds. The continuous applause of�A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live, and of course multiple 'moments of silence' strung together by Jonty Semper, and now we have Christopher DeLaurenti's Favorite Intermissions, which is just what the title indicates. At various classical performances, during the intermissions, when most folks went to the lobby to smoke, or grab a snack, visit the rest room, DeLaurenti stayed put, or wandered through the partially empty auditorium, capturing all the wonderful sounds that exist when the musicians are not playing and the crowds are not hushed and listening attentively.�
There is of course the general hubbub, foot steps, the low murmur of conversation, papers being folded, the ruffling of garments, laughter, coughing, snippets of conversation, all blended together into a surprisingly pleasant hum, a minimal multilayered drone, which on its own would be quite an excellent listen. But the other element, that is maybe the most fascinating, is capturing the musicians -- who are normally quite disciplined, playing the score perfectly, following the conductor, striving for utter perfection -- with their hair down as it were, relaxed and sort of just messing about. Lots of improvising, which they are not afforded the opportunity to do EVER, and some subtly impromptu jams, percussion and horns, weaving elaborate little sonic tableaus, fragments of the pieces they just performed, or are about to perform, removed from their context and allowed to breathe. It's loose and spirited, ramshackle, but also amazing to listen to.�
The combination of the room noise and the random bits of orchestral music are totally fascinating and sound absolutely perfect together. It's hard not to hear these excerpts as composed avant garde pieces: Symphony Number 4 for laid back oboe player, screwing around percussionist, crinkled candy wrapper, shuffling footsteps, random conversation and occasional laughter....
Sometimes the sound is quite minimal and quiet, just a few players playing scales, a handful of scattered voices, other times it's intense and cacophonous, with nearly the whole orchestra jamming wildly on some theme or another, exuding more of a wild free Sun Ra vibe than what you might normally expect from typically reserved classical performers.�
A surprisingly complex super intimate portrait of every day sounds, interactions between people transformed into performance, the noise of modern life mixed with the the mostly ignored sonic events surrounding some of the most beautiful music on earth, revealing that once again, music truly is where you find it, even if you find it while all dressed up, sitting in a plush velvet seat, with the lights up, listening to musicians tune up and the folks behind you talking about their plans for dinner.
Vladislav Delay has a thing for cologne (this is a true fact) -- not the city as you may expect from one whose aesthetic parallels that of Cologne's Wolfgang Voigt and Thomas Brinkmann, but rather the mens' perfume. It may be a stretch to qualify his complex percolations of dubbed-out ambient techno as musical equals to his cologne fetish, but there must be some connection between the two. Where Thievery Corporation reeks of AquaVelva, thus smelling like a soft-core porno, Vladislav Delay has the aroma of something infinitely more sophisticated, like the clean citrus scents from Hermes. "Anima" is his lightest and airiest production to date, almost abandoning the rhythmic proclivities of his dense Chain Reaction record in favor of skittering abstraction that loosely follow a subtle ambient dub rhythm (one complaint: a two-note synth pad sequence that is practically identical to the Twin Peaks theme, and thus Moby's early techno anthem "Go!"). One continuous track.
The latest from Finnish minimalist electronic dub technician Vladisav Delay is not in fact a record of demos as the title might lead you to believe, but is actually the first release on his own Huume label, and is easily the most exciting thing he's ever done. Still dabbling in dub, but just barely, this is spare and haunting, with massive expanses of shimmering sound, reverbed emanations that ripple endlessly to the fuzzy grey of the horizon. Industrial clatter is stretched and reshaped into rhythmic echoes, never coalescing enough to constitute an actual beat, but more a series of random pulses and throbs, providing a skeletal support for Delay's blurry indistinct map of abstract dub. Imagine the first groundbreaking Pole record, played through rusty loudspeakers, mounted on unsteady supports, spread throughout a bombed out and wasted urban landscape, the sound waves reflecting from jagged, toppled masonry, shattered windows, and rubble strewn alleys. But then somehow, imbue this murky otherworldy ambience with a distant warm glow, a sort of slight hopefulness, minor keys distantly mirrored by subtle major keys, a single shaft of sunlight filtered through dust choked atmosphere and filthy weather worn windows. Just enough to allow for some slight rosy shading to the otherwise grey sheets of sonic shimmer. At once totally soothing and hypnotically dreamy, but also a deep and darkly challenging listen.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Release number 5 from this great new New Zealand label. Just like the first two (Rosy Parlene and Parmentier, reviewed in the last AQ-List) these are all-white packages of beautiful, minimal music.
Vladislav Delay (from Finland, a hemisphere away from the other Sigma artists physically but not musically) distills dub into faded ghosts of fragmented sound, immersing the listener in a droning deconstruction of snare, cymbal, and analog electronic sounds.
