Dump is, as he so clearly tongue in cheekly states in the first song, a One Man Band. Namely James McNew who also holds down bass duties in Yo La Tengo. McNew has been making solo records and singles as Dump for years now. This is basic bedroom indie rock, with McNew's bright tenor, just a bit fragile, just a bit steel, hovering over the sweet guitars and hummable melodies. As with most bedroom projects, there's drum machine, but it's thankfully not annoying. It's used in a deliberately lo-fi way similar to Tall Dwarfs' cobbled together appeal. A possible drawback of the album is that his choice of covers is so good! That's not a bad thing, in fact it makes for a much more interesting album as a whole, but I have to admit found myself listening to the Thin Lizzy and Gerald Levert covers over and over, which takes away just a bit from the pretty originals.
Cover art by the Sea and Cake's Archer Prewitt!!!
MPEG Download: "Sisters" [/audio/dumpsisters.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Sisters" [/audio/dumpsisters.m3u]
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Eagerly-awaited new cd from Yo La Tengo bass player James McNew. Thoughtfully-written pop songs, not nearly as dense as YLT.
The Dump reissue campaign continues! Dump being the one man 4-track bedroom indie rock solo project of James McNew of Yo La Tengo. A few lists back we reviewed Dump's debut, 1993's Superpowerless, a deliriously dreamy collection of indie pop gems, super catchy originals and unlikely covers, all delivered in McNew's warbly croon, the sound varying dramatically from fuzzy jangle to distorted crunch, hushed balladic shimmer to plaintive twee pop, but all of pretty goddamn great. So two years later, and it seems very little has changed in the musical mind (or bedroom recording studio) of McNew, with Dump record number two, 1995's I Can Hear Music, which strikes a similar balance between, sad boy, home brewed, Sentridoh style bedroom minimalism, and some surprisingly ambitious full band blowouts. The opening two tracks here display that perfectly. Warbly, woozy opener "Slow Down", all simple skeletal drum beats, acoustic guitar strum, and sweetly crooned vocals, not to mention all sorts of warble and tape drop out, the result a subtly catchy, super personal chunk dreamy and catchy indie pop, which leads directly into "Jury Duty", which opens with a squall of feedback, and soon explodes into some fuzzed out shoegazey noise rock, which seems a bit too rocking and noisy to have been bedroom recorded, and yet, it still retains much of the vibe that defines the rest of the more intimate tracks. And again, it's pretty goddamn catchy!
And so it goes, McNew whipping up another sweet batch of covers, our favorite maybe being his version of Ultravox's "Vienna" which is SUCH a great song to begin with, that even in its stripped down lo-fi form, it manages to be so haunting and moving and goddamn great! Elsewhere McNew tackles jams by Tuli Kupferberg, Bob Dylan, Fish And Roses, Refrigerator, Half Japanese, Mayo Thompson and the Beach Boys (the title track). And in between all those covers, a clutch of originals that more than hold up along side the covers, in fact, like on the first record, if you weren't familiar with the originals, the covers here easily could be McNew originals, which definitely speaks to not only his musical influences, but his knack for songwriting and lo-fi popsmithery.
"Invisible" is a hazy, washed out softly psychedelic slowcore ballad, "Liberty Spikes" is distorted Dinosaur Jr / Teenage Fanclub style fuzzed out indie rock, "Beyond The Door" is a gorgeous slab of 4-track bedroom folk, "Never Comes" is a dark brooder, organ driven, laced with primitive Casio drum machine rhythms, the vocals a hushed croon, droney and dreamy, and we could go on and on and on. Needless to say, fans of classic indie rock/pop and lo-fi 4-track bedroom jams, it doesn't get a whole lot better than this. And obviously Yo La Tengo fans will find much to dig here too.
This new deluxe version includes a ton of extra tracks (included as a second bonus disc with the cd), and a massive booklet, with new liner notes from McNew, as well as rare photos and drawings, and the original notes from the original release, not to mention hilarious illustrations of McNew's pedal set up, the usual distortion and delay pedals replaced with pedals like Boo Hoo, Mood Ruiner, Frequency Ignorer and Oops. Awesome.
Finally, after decades of being out of print and unavailable, the debut solo record from Dump is available again. Dump for those who don't know (or don't remember), was the bedroom 4-track solo project of none other than James McNew, bass player for indie icons Yo La Tengo. And back in the day, as in 20 years ago, Dump pushed all those buttons we couldn't seem to get pushed enough. Dump was like a less purposefully frustrating Sebadoh, sure quirkiness abounds, as do sonic experiments, and unlikely covers (Wreckless Erik, Sun Ra, Henry Mancini, Silver Apples, NRBQ), but at its core, Dump was fundamentally, heart on sleeve, home brewed indie pop, that indie pop sound varying dramatically throughout, from hushed folkiness, to rambunctious distorted fuzzy noise pop, to near metallic chugs, a few tracks are dead ringers for modern sounds (check out the impossibly Pinback like "Good Medicine", Pinback, twenty years before there WAS a Pinback), some not so modern, like "So Sedimentary", a track from a cartoon made by Georgia Hubley of YLT's parents, which just so happened to be composed by a young Quincy Jones! And others, like McNew's reinterpretation of a Shaggs classic, ostensibly not a cover, but deftly capturing the naivete of the original, and recasting at something that sounds like it could be a Dump song proper. Which is really the magic of McNew's Dump, if you didn't know the covers WERE covers, you'd think they were written by McNew himself, which speaks to a deft songwriting pen, and the collection as a whole, recorded in various locations, and of varying sound quality, over the course of several years, is often derided for being so all over the place, and yet, to these ears, it's the sort of early nineties patchwork style bedroom pop that we never get tired of. And considering this stuff is twenty years old, it sounds pretty great even today.
It's hard to pick favorites, and hard to resist going through the whole record track by track, but "So Sedimentary" the above mentioned cover, sounds like some lost sixties psychedelic gem, "Secret Blood" is total classic nineties indie rock, right down to the distorted noise poppy chorus, and McNew's strained sad boy vox. The Sun Ra cover is cool too, and again, if you weren't familiar with Sun Ra, it definitely sounds like a Dump original, albeit a pretty weird one. "The Sea Wall" is fuzzy and shoegazey, and Dump's cover of "Moon River" is pretty divine. "19 1/2" is the 'heavy' track here, all distorted dirgey riffage and squealing feedback, pounding drums and some rad psychedelic shred, "Pennies From Heaven" melds buzzy distorto guitars to lilting fuzzy indie pop, while Jaundice IS in fact a Sebadoh cover, and definitely points to the sonic connection, and finally, "Bus-Kicker's Theme" is fuzzy and playful, like the theme song to some alternate universe children's TV show. And that's really just scratching the surface.
This new reissue tacks on a bunch of bonus material, songs from comps, and collections, and an early ep, there's also expanded artwork and new liner notes, lots of photos too, odds are, even if you already own Superpowerless, and love it as much as we did and do, you're probably gonna want this new version for the extra stuff. And if you've yet to discover Dump, you're in for a treat!
Dump is the longtime solo project of James McNew (bassist w/Yo La Tengo). Tackling a heap of Prince songs in his own special way means loading them all into his super-sweet lo-fi machine and setting it to "stun." This cd is a reissue of a cassette (released a
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In which James McNew, bassist for Yo La Tengo and a fantastic songwriter in his own right, makes sloppy lo-fi pop variants of your favorite Prince songs. All hail the return of the Shrimper Casssette format. And now it's time to party like I've heard it for the thousandth time...
The latest collection of naive lo-fi pop experimentation from James McNew who also spends his time as the bassist for Yo La Tengo.
2003 has been a very busy year for John Duncan, having released 5 full albums along with creating two rather impressive sound installations in Sweden and his current base of operations Italy. Many of these projects have simply been the culmination of projects that began quite some time ago; and fortunately, Mr. Duncan has steered clear of many of the failings of hyper-prolific artists who simply fall back upon signature styles. As always, Duncan seeks out new challenges for himself and nakedly asserts them upon his audience, whether they want it or not.
Da Sich Die Machtgier... began as a collaborative project between Duncan and Asmus Tietchens. To begin, Tietchens sent Duncan recordings of Tietchens reading texts from E.M. Cioran, the early 20th century skeptic whose quotes are featured on almost all of the Tietchens back catalogue releases. In turn, Duncan processed those recordings, sent them back to Tietchens, and awaited further instructions. Instead of receiving another round of recordings to work with, Duncan received a note from Tietchens that his initial recordings were sufficiently complete and that Tietchens would refuse any credit for his contribution. To this day, Duncan still disagrees with Tietchens about the credit issue, but went ahead and released the results as is.
An unnervingly digital construction, Da Sich Die Machtgier... relies heavily on the maniacal hammering of the DSP / timestretching filters. For the first half of the album, these agitated, rapid-fire noises approximate Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and strongly reference the process of a thoroughly disembodied voice as the content to the work. However, the caustic abstraction completely dissolves in the album's epic, 30 minute finale. Much closer to the subtle power of Phantom Broadcast and Infrasound - Tidal, this track smears Tietchens voice into an electronic windstorm, sweeping with an elegant majesty.
As with Duncan's entire body of work, Da Sich Die Machtgier... is a very strong release.
Sonic provocateur John Duncan has said he prefers the use of shortwave radio signals over any musical instrument in his pursuit into the pure physicality of noise. "Fresh," however, finds Duncan stepping back from that proclamation, as this album documents his collaboration with Zeitkratzer, a German avant-garde ensemble that specializes in the translation of electronic and noise compositions into scores for classical instrumentation. Under the guidance of Reinhold Friedl, Zeitkratzer's refreshing attitude is that "the opening to multi-disciplinarity isn't new any more, but artistic normality." In addition to this disc with Duncan, they've also worked with Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski, Phill Niblock, Christina Kubisch, and most recently Lou Reed in reworking his pioneering '70s noise opus "Metal Machine Music", if you can believe that!
"Fresh" features two Duncan compositions, "Nav-Flex" and "Trinity", as performed by Zeitratzer. Initially released as a collaboration with Francisco Lopez, "Nav-Flex" -- which happens to be one of my (Jim's) favorite Duncan pieces -- translates very nicely from original composition for shortwave, datastreams, and voice. Opening with a very loud, discordant blast of horns, strings, piano, percussion and electronics, Zeitkratzer vigilantly maintains Duncan's course of action by quickly fading the notes to a near silence that nervously persists for several minutes. The rumblings of those interwoven orchestral tones re-appear as a resurgent mirror reflection of that first incarnation of sound on the record and maintain a plateau-level of sustained, droning tones which accurately mimic the sounds that Duncan originally recorded. Zeitkratzer's version of "Trinity," on the other hand, sounds remarkably different than the original Duncan piece, a caustic composition that investigated the electric buzzings of shortwave radio static. It does follow Duncan's pattern of varying shortwave-like fluctuations, but the tonal colors of the two "Trinities" exhibit a much greater distance between the original and the orchestrated version than with "Nav-Flex." It's interesting to wonder how Duncan/Zeitkratzer scored these pieces (perhaps as a graphical score a la Cornelius Cardew?), but whatever the method, the results are nonetheless amazing.
In 1998, the American expatriot sound artist John Duncan made contact with Australian sound archivist Densil Cabrera, in hopes of arranging a project based on oceanic, seismic, and atmospheric measurements. While his resume points towards an academic background in electroacoustics and sound installation, Cabera presented these recordings to Duncan as raw scientific data, having translated three centuries (yes, centuries!) of the tidal spectra published by the Australian National Tide Tables into a far more digestible recording that compressed one year of data down to one second. Further recordings transposed barometric pressure recordings from two Australian air force bases and others used seismometers to produce images from a number of earthquakes and nuclear tests. In researching how he wanted to proceed with these recordings, Duncan was also hoping to form an impression of Densil's personality. However, during the five years it took for this collaboration to be completed, Duncan came to the realisation that he knew nothing more about Densil then when he started. Thus, he applied this detachment of scientific rigor to the production of Densil's recordings. "Infrasound - Tidal" emerges as a stark album of subtle tonal shifts, mostly low rattling frequencies that transition into gray static flutterings, resulting in an album not unlike the best of Francisco Lopez' "Belle Confusion" series. Like all of Duncan's recordings, "Infrasound - Tidal" seeks wisdom and knowledge through the process of sound construction and metaphoric conceptualization. While he may not have found what he wanted, Duncan wonderfully took what was given to him and realized a fantastic atmosphere of stark desolation.
MPEG Download: "Infrasound - Tidal (excerpt 1)" [/audio/duncaninfrasound1.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Infrasound - Tidal (excerpt 1)" [/audio/duncaninfrasound1.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Infrasound - Tidal (excerpt 2)" [/audio/duncaninfrasound2.mp3]
BACK IN STOCK, AT A LOWER PRICE!!! In the early '80s, John Duncan moved from Los Angeles to Tokyo where he began a number of very interesting works with grandiose agendas of destabilization and transgression. One facet of his Toyko period was his pirate radio station using the frequency of NHK 1 after that station signed off at night. But perhaps the most infamous work was the pornography that Duncan produced under the pseudonym John See. Part of the intention of the John See series was for this work to be used by the viewer as source material for any video collage work; of course, Duncan was also going for sexual titillation as well. During that time Duncan shot five films for the adult film company Kuki - Doll, Fallen Angel, Inka, Aidayuki Passion, and Power Love. There are some distinctly unconventional aspects to these films, as Duncan often layered multiple images and early video effects during the build up to the money shot. But most of the sex and the "scripting" around those sex scenes tended to be pretty standard fare. What's most bizarre about Duncan's porn is the soundtrack that he uses. Instead of the funk grooves and wah-wah guitar workouts, he recontextualizes the ecstatic gasps and moans from his own footage alongside sterile drones culled from shortwave. If anything his use of sound is the most provocative element to the John See films.
In 1994, Duncan returned to the John See series, remastering several of the scores as well as remixing others in new compositions (which fit into his original idea that this work should be recycled for the viewer's use). The John See Soundtracks is a quintessential document of Duncan's early styles which ruptured violently with shortwave static and sexual outbursts in direct contrast to the cauldron of somatic fluctuations and electrical drones.
While attending Cal Arts in the mid '70s, John Duncan discovered the transient frequencies of shortwave, and made it his tool of choice in transferring his knowledge about the psychological implications for specific colors to the realm of sound construction. Instead of merely rehasing the Marshall McLuhan's 'medium is the message' tropes, Duncan's use of the shortwave is marked by his ability to transform the sound device into an externalization of profound (and sometimes disturbing) psychological states. Throughout his impressive back catalogue of recordings, the textural grit and grim electrical tonality of shortwave has repeatedly surfaced in any number of contexts, whether that be the poisonous aggression of "River Of Flames" or the architectural hauntings of "Palace of Mind." The same can be said for this album, as Duncan used nothing but a single shortwave transmission augmented by minimal amount of processing in composing the 47 minutes found within "Phantom Broadcast." Instead of the darkened references mentioned earlier, Duncan has extracted a sublimely powerful and uniquely transcendent series of sounds from what is just a utility signal containing something banal like air traffic controller data but could be something sort of shadowy like a RTTY radioteletype (a fairly sophisticated form of encryption; although not impossible to crack like Numbers Stations). These electrical sounds -- originally noxious striations of aural code -- have been smeared into quasi-harmonic, gaseous states and articulated as gasping reverberating drones. Right from the beginning of the album, these sounds do appear as from shortwave but as an epic piece of '60s Minimalism or Ligeti choral and caralon composition. Such references do not disappear over the "Phantom Broadcast" composition as organic cycles and fluctuations move throughout. It's simply breathtaking and beautiful.
While there were a number of great albums in 2002, Duncan's "Phantom Broadcast" is firmly planted at the top of my (Jim's) list for record of the year.
A recent document from the outstanding Mort Aux Vaches series of commissions for the Dutch radio station VRPO is as with all from the series quite limited. Here Duncan's deep bellowing gasps of shortwave radio noise and distant furnaces are delicately processed into tense soundscapes.
In the Jan 1999 issue of the Wire, Jim O'Rourke was the Invisible Jukebox victim who successfully identified all of the records which were played for him without any prior indication of what was to be heard. All of his answers were coupled with "fuck, yeah!" or "that fuckin' rules" - odd explications for Fennesz, Luc Ferrari, and John Duncan, whom Jim O'Rourke talks about further:
"John's awesome, insanely underrated. He did this one piece called 'Scare', where he basically got a gun filled with blanks and wore a mask, went up to friends' house, knocked on the door, and shot them. And then ran. Getting to know him, I understood that he has an absolute sincerity to learn about his existence. He's actually very influential on me... When I was playing a lot in Europe, I was doing these shows where I was getting to the point of annihilating myself. Playing one note or whatever - I would not allow myself to do the same thing again at all. Just going on stage and trying to find the thing that would make me the most incredibly uncomfortable, and forcing myself to do it."
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"Tap Internal" firmly addresses a question that has been tangential to a number of John Duncan's previous releases: "What is the sound of energy?" Starting with the basic scientific method of breaking down a substance to reveal its structure, the character of its parts, and the taxonomic position it holds in relation to other elements like it, Duncan researches sound by crumbling it into its subatomic particles. "Tap Internal" is an ambitious project that mirrors the raw energy of white-hot VLF cracklings, shortwave radio buzz, and tectonic-plate rumbles. While Duncan's experiments have a willful cruelty to them, his static laden pulsations and incendiary ambient environments aren't merely theatrics of aural confrontation. The metaphoric hammer that Duncan takes to his sound sources softens in the presence of sublime yet beautiful moments of mesmerizing drones. In the process of obliteration, Duncan may have stumbled onto bigger more metaphysical questions that he may not be willing to answer quite yet, like "What is the sound of Duncan's soul?"
The sound constructs of John Duncan almost exist as a residue of his own personal research into esoteric realms of knowledge, existential bouts of continuous questioning, and transgressive acts against himself and society at large. Here was a man who claimed to have sex with a corpse as a performance piece entitled Blind Date, whereby he planted his last seed in a dead body before undergoing a vasectomy. That event presumably took place nearly 30 years ago, when Duncan was emerging as an artist in Los Angeles alongside Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley. Blind Date has become a piece of infamy that blossomed beyond his already highly transgressive context, but he's always been an artist who is very deft at framing particular works through the process and through the context of said piece. The Nazca Transmissions is one such piece.
A few years back, Duncan received an email from a German archaeologist working at the site of the Nazca Lines in Peru. These are the massive drawings carved into an arid plateau some 2000 years ago by the ancient Nazca people. Some of these figures are representation, some are not, and some get as large of 200 yards in size, all posing the question: who was supposed to be seeing these figures, and to what end? Now, this archaeologist claimed to have been able to record sounds from those line drawings; and he presented the raw material to Duncan, having been familiar with his transmutational pieces of digital data and shortwave. Duncan was suitably perplexed and intrigued by the sounds that were presented to him, proceeding to work on a series of compositions through that material. Unfortunately, this archaeologist ceased all communications, leading Duncan to wonder if it was all a big hoax.
Eerie ringings pocked with scrabbled textures almost like clipped VLF recordings open the album set against a gaping chasm of quietness. While Duncan's penchant for abrasive noise and jarring juxtaposition is well documented, you won't find that here. By the end of the side, the textures take on an unsettled rhythm that almost resembles human speech garbled through the process. Very compelling, very unsettled. The second side begins with an interlocking series of modulated and muffled Shepherd Tones, these are the audio equivalent of a barber's pole with the tones giving the appearance of being in constant ascension or descension. It's a common artifact found throughout the shortwave bands, harkening back to one of his preferred sound sources; and Duncan puts them to excellent use amidst a sea of low end rumblings. Soon after, pierced tones push to the foreground as those low end rumblings mutate into grotesquely deformed growlings only to fade against a hushed coda of grey noise. This is limited to less than 300 copies, and it remains to be seen if we'll be able to get more than the handful we have now. Recommended no matter how you look at it.
Before we get into the amazing sounds that John Duncan and C.M. von Hausswolff have created for this album (which we have to say is pretty fucking incredible), we have to drool over the artwork. Sure, it's always nice to get one of those hand-made packages, loving assembled by the musician from scraps of wallpaper or gesso smeared across heavy card stock; where the investment is paid through blood and sweat. But at the same time, it can sometimes be pretty fascinating to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, to see what happens when money is no object, and thus nearly any vision can be realised. The recent Tool record is one example (reviewed elsewhere on this list) with its incredible built in lenses and stereoscopic booklet. And then there's Our Telluric Conversation, which employs a seriously and gloriously reckless design sensibility. Unfotunately, jpeg reproductions of this cd's cover will never translate how amazingly cool the packaging is. The white O-card / slipcover which wraps around the CD and the accompanying 40-page booklet is printed on a rubberized paper dotted with braille, making it strangely tactile, and thus not a little unsettling just to touch the album! Which is appropriate considering the musical content...
John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff have made an dark and unsettling album in Our Telluric Conversation, the second collaboration between these two AQ-favorite sound artists, opening with ominous bleeping, sort of sounding like sonar or a life support system barely keeping someone alive. An electronic turbulance gradually swarms around these mechanized pulses and explodes in a torrent of furious magneto noise, sounding very similar to the recent Duncan collaboration with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisainen. Abruptly, the track comes to a halt as the whispering voice of Hausswolff begins reciting a presumably fictional tale in which the protagonist has been infected with maggots and tries to rid his body of the parasites by communing with lizards and snakes through a combination of occult rituals. Hausswolff's whisper is all that one hears, with his lips closely pressed up to the microphone making saliva, lips smacking, and teeth gnashing all audible. Upon the conclusion of Hausswolff's spoken excerpt, the two proceed with a long-form construction for brilliantly shimmered drones and flickering sinewaves that's as good as anything by Phill Niblock, Mirror, or The Hafler Trio. Our Telluric Conversation concludes with another extended composition that bridges the signature aesthetics of the two artists, with a deadened monotone of processed 60-cycle hums (that's Hausswolff) and a seductive processing of shortwave static (that's Duncan). By themselves, Duncan and Hausswolff have crafted amazing records; but together, these two have really tapped into something eerie, psychologically instable, and sublimely beautiful. Highly recommended!
The bulk of John Duncan's exceptional catalogue of sonic provocation and sublime post-minimalism has been collaborations. CM Von Hausswolff, Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, Asmus Tietchens, Peter Fleur, Max Springer, Giuliana Stefani, and Elliott Sharp have all worked with Duncan in recent years; yet at the same time, each of those collaborations exhibits the inescapable gravitational pull of Duncan's conceptual and aesthetic agendas. This collaboration with Edvard Graham Lewis is no exception. Lewis, of course, is the legendary bassist / vocalist from Wire and has often ventured into the netherworlds of the avant-garde with fellow Wireman Bruce Gilbert in various guises. Like Duncan, Lewis is quite comfortable with the role of collaborator.
The human voice has been the springboard for a number of Duncan's records including the recent collaborations with Tietchens and Sharp. Not surprising, the most obvious contributions that Lewis makes on Presence are a few choice spoken word bits highlighting his elegantly sinister baritone voice (which in my opinion is more interesting than Colin Newman's). Broken into variable streams of timestretched anxiety during the album's introduction, Lewis' voice slips away beyond recognizablility, falling into an abyss of shortwave hum and crackle that have long been the divining rod for Duncan's epistomological inquistions. The centerpiece of the album is a 30 minute piece fusing those same gray timbers of shortwave with monochromatic vocal compositions, presumably birthed from Lewis' lips and later manipulated by Duncan. Even if Lewis did have a greater hand in the mix, Presence sounds much like Duncan's masterpieces Phantom Broadcast and Palace of Mind, which is not a bad thing at all. The album ends with Lewis' unmistakable voice offering a naked piece of advice:"Take a step forward and tell the truth." As narcotizing as the album becomes, this whispered text booms out of the speakers as a startling conclusion to this excellent album.
Once in a while, Aquarius has definitely put forth opinions that some folks didn't like. It goes without saying that those negative reactions seem to always be in response to a negative review of some band someone loves and is very sensitive about. Fair enough. We've gotten crap for a Butthole surfers review as well as our continuing indifference to house music. Well, brace yourself for another one, maybe no surprise: we have no desire to suffer through another Elliott Sharp album. Even though the Downtown New York veteran wanker has teamed up with one of our favorite sound reseachers John Duncan, we were skeptical to say the least, simply because the presence of Mr. Sharp could potentially ruin this album.
Yeah, this album could have been a total disaster. But it's not... not at all. In fact, Tongue is a fantastic document of mulched shortwave and vocalizations, and will probably be one of the better sound art recordings to come out in 2004. Either we've always only heard the really terrible Elliott Sharp records or John Duncan is wholly responsible for the album's success. Either way, Tongue is really a superb piece of work. Duncan has long praised the human voice as the most powerful instrument that he's encountered, even above his beloved shortwave which has been central to almost all of his compositions. Here, Duncan and Sharp manipulate sustained vocalizations from both artists as well as quiet gurglings of saliva coagulating within the cavities of their respective mouths. While these sounds acquire a delicate tactility that recalls the likes of Steve Roden and Toshiya Tsunoda, Duncan's shortwave interrupts and ruptures the quiet passages of this record with caustic static, twin blade flutterings, and electrocuted drones. Much could be said about the dislocation of the voice by a transmitter / receiver machine, but we'll leave that for the post-structuralist, academic types. That said, Duncan's recent work has shifted toward monumental compositions of minimalism (e.g. Phantom Broadcast, Stun Shelter, Keening Towers, etc.); but with Tongue, his work privleges the fragment (perhaps in deference to Sharp), making this an album closer to his previous masterpieces Tap Internal and River In Flames. Another recommended John Duncan record, and perhaps the first and only Elliott Sharp album we'll endorse wholeheartedly.
Hmm. These experimental ambient drone electronics guys sure keep themselves -- and each other -- busy. Elsewhere on this list you'll find another double cd that sees Lopez teaming up with Zbignew Karkowski. And there's also a Karkowski/Xopher Davidson disc too. Etc. But if they can't get enough of the drones, well, that's 'cause neither can you, right? So check this out... Both
- RealAudio clip: Flex
- RealAudio clip: Gate
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Palace Of Mind is the 2000 recording collaboration between John Duncan and Giuliana Stefani. Mr. Duncan has long been one of AQ's favorite experimentalists, having started things out back in the '70s LA performance art community only to quit the US to pursue his own intense psychological research into sound, projection, installation, photography, and the like. Stefani is a mathematician by training and became acquainted with Duncan through a collaborative project they began in Amsterdam in 1996. For this album, the two sifted through digital treatments of shortwave transmissions, wire-tapped data streams, and voice. In turn, they work the album into labyrinthine composition that can hold any number of potent metaphors: the neural synapses of the human brain, the schematics of a computer, or simply an architectural set of overlapping resonant spaces. Rareified tones set with motoric vibrations transition through the fluttering of (or rather the lack there of, as this sounds like the empty spaces between the bands marked by a mechanoid oily hiss) and onto slashing digital drone. Here, one can think to Duncan's exceptional field recordings made at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in the early '90s. Within the movement from an irritable data-stream purity to the gossamer haze of shortwave distortion to gaping drones of treated vocal vibrato, Duncan and Stefani have set a trajectory deep into the heart of their sonic architecture, with each 'room' saturated with an anxiousness for what may be on the other side of the door. You won't find Duncan firing a gun at your head (seriously, he did that as performance piece called Scare back in the late '70s, using blanks mind you), but Palace Of Mind revels in an interlocking network of chambers that resonate and breathe with a profound beauty. Highly recommended!
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Making full use of the unintentionally dynamic acoustic phenomenon occurring within the Stanford Linear Accelerator, John Duncan and Max Springer have collaborated on this haunting collage of semi-processed field recordings made within the monolithic structure 2 miles long and several stories high. For those unfamiliar with Duncan's extraordinary shortwave experiments, this is a excellent introduction to one of the best dronologists / sound artists of the past two decades! From the liner notes: "The accelerator is full of contradictions: structures built to dwarf and outlast their creators, designed to generate subatomic events that take place in a time scale that is impossible to imagine, using forces that are hostile or lethal to human life, yet are entirely human-created. A 'city of the dead' that seems to have an existence of its own with or without its operators. For this work, the electon is understood as a metaphor for the process of life: isolated, compelled by a system that uses the electron's own energy to force it into a path that leads at a constantly increasing pace to certain destruction -- to a point of certain change, of complete resolution and the beginning of a new process."
The work of John Duncan should need no introduction, as he has long been one of Aquarius' favorite sound artists; however, Paolo Parisi is something of a mystery to us. An Italian sculptor, painter, and installation artist, Parisi commissioned Duncan to compose a sound component for one of Parisi's installation. The themes behind Parisi's installation for plastic tubes and eviscerated cardboard sentry houses are far too convoluted to recount within this review; but in a shocking display of Aquarian restraint, we'll merely mention that the Panopticon, Hitchcock, Deleuze, and Duchamp all get name checked throughout the book's text celebrating Parisi's installation. The CD is all Duncan; and it's well worth the price of admission. Duncan has long been known for his use of shortwave radio sounds as the springboard for his psychologically intense compositions; but slowly, he has been introducing the human voice into his pantheon of sound sources. For Conservatory, voice is the only source he is using, in particular he's amplifying and stretching the gasps, wheezes, and hisses that occur during the act of breathing. Through his manipulation of these sounds, Duncan cultivates a vast network of gaping blasts of air that collectively build into a ghastly, frigid drone emanating from a unscrupulous cryrogenics laboratory. Another epochal release from Mr. Duncan!
Earlier in 2003, long time colleagues John Duncan and C.M. von Hausswolff collaborated on an installation at the Nicola Fornello Gallery in Prato, Italy. Judging from the massive 50 page, full color book that accompanies the cd of "Stun Shelter," the two artists presented individual installations whose sound elements bled together within the space to form the collaborative aspect of their work. Duncan revisted the pornographic "John See" films he produced in Japan during the mid-80s. That series accurately followed the strict Japanese rules about the visual representation of sexuality, in which no penetration or pubic hair can be shown. As for the soundtrack to those films, Duncan combined distant shrill orgasms from the actresses and his own claustrophobic, breathy vocalizations, slowly uttering optimistic phrases in Japanese. Despite their content, Duncan's renderings of language take on an aura of mechanical monstrosity. Hausswolff's installation was equally disturbing, having designed a haute couture bar and lounge for the sole purpose of huffing glue and paint thinner. The Hausswolff soundtrack featured several tone generators droning toward infinity. The amalgamation between the Duncan and Hausswolff soundtracks works incredibly well, offering a backbone to Duncan's vocalizations and contextually specific details to Hausswolff's numbing minimalism.
With Duncan having a whole slew of releases that have just come out at the end of 2003, "Stun Shelter" is easily the best of the lot, and certainly ranks as one of his best records alongside "Phantom Broadcast." At the same time, this album (especially with its highly informative book) encapsulates many of the ideas and themes (i.e. the transgressions of cultural norms, the never-ending inquisitions of power structures, the experiential realizations as existential proofs, etc.) that makes Duncan and Hausswolff such amazing artists. One of the best experimental records of 2003, though pricey.
This is an ultra limited split seven inch on Die Stadt, featuring stalwart sound researcher John Duncan, conceptual artist C.M. von Hausswolff, and Ditterich Von Euler-Donnersperg, who is often described as a cranky writer. Duncan offers 6 locked grooves of
Three excellent pieces from three excellent sound artists that Die Stadt lumped onto one CD, with no real thematic connection to speak of. John Duncan's piece is a recording of the jawdropping live set he did at The Compound here in San Francisco in 2006. The hissing shortwave and noxious datastreams which have been signature source materials for Duncan continue here, with Duncan displaying a considerable amount of restraint in the slippery juxtaposition of softened white noise, periodic accelerations and crescendos, and subharmonic rumblings. This climaxes with a tempestuous 8 second blast of hurricane-shock noise. Kontakt Der Junglinge (aka Thomas Koner & Asmus Tietchens) also present a live piece, but then again haven't all of their recordings been live presentations? This one from the Mutek Festival in 2003 is an isolationist gem of shadowy ambience and deep deep drones (the Koner half of the equation) with electronically treated recordings of clanking machines (the Tietchens half of the equation). Hausswolff seems to have revisited the source material from his There Are No Crows Flying Around The Hancock Building installation / cd document, with a loop of an electronically treated screeching birds (not a crow, mind you... there's a red-tail hawk and the chirp of what could just be a blackbird), monotonously sitting on top of gradient build of amassed gray noise.
When John Duncan sent us this collaboration with the members of Pan Sonic, he warned us that the first two tracks would be a little hard to take on headphones. Oh yes, that warning should be heeded by all, headphones or not; especially if you're expecting the electric seduction of Duncan's Phantom Broadcast. But don't let the warning scare you off; as this is an incredible fusion of caustic electronics, shortwave radio signal manipulation, and the hammering arpeggiations which have become a trademark of the Finnish techno minimalists. So Nine Suggestions begins with some 15 minutes of white-knuckle noise tightly composed from siren squall electronics, volatile data streams from shortwave utility signals, and plenty of sawtoothed abrasiveness. In this introduction, Nine Suggestions harkens to the Pan Sonic masterpiece 4CD box set Kesto, which expressed plenty of noxious intensity in its rhythmic overload. Even as the album calms considerably in the expanse of the album, Kesto still stands the most accurate comparison as that album shifts from aggression and explosion to contemplation and eerieness. In the shadowy half-melodies, tectonic rumblings, nocturnal drones, dental drill vibrations, submariner sonar pings, and delicate modulation of electronic tones found within the latter two-thirds of Nine Suggestions, Duncan, Vainio, and Vaisanen have created something that really is as one would expect from these high-calliber artists. Highly recommended!
The Scattering is a collaborative release from the exemplary John Duncan and the little known sound artist Peter Fleur, who had a few minor league successes as L.O.S.D. with Radboud Mens. Here, the two artists collaborate on one long track and offer solo works to round out the album, always using data files and shortwave as the source material. Each of the tracks have been severely manipulated with loads of DSP effects, feedback accumulation, and resampling techniques to form plastic drones rippling with a dramatic psychic tension. As on Duncan's previous album Da Sich Die Machtgier..., the dominant sounds are the dissonant fillibration from densely packed samples that have all been timestretched towards oblivion. The collabortive piece builds dramatically through those cracked drones with a mechnized bass pulse ominously crawling below. Fleur's solo work splits itself between a Francisco Lopez-esque low end rumble and a cascade of digitized textures amassing into frigid wall of noise. The final track is a signature John Duncan piece, where he amplifies the unsettling nature of shortwave's liminal spaces between the active broadcast frequencies. Shortwave has long been a favorite medium for Duncan, not only for its aesthetic qualities but its allegorical properties of psychological unrest, hidden communications, information wars, etc. In this piece for The Scattering, Duncan contextualizes shortwave static as a parallel to somatic fluctuations, where the sounds breathe, ebb, and contract in response to a subconscious intellect. Very very nice.
Really fucking spooky! Of course, we wouldn't expect much less from John Duncan, whose sound research specifically seeks out the most intense of psychological states. As the most infamous case, Duncan's Blind Date performance piece tells of his presumed experience with necrophilia as a masochistic ritual for depositing his last seed in a dead body before undergoing a vasectomy. While the audio documentation of Blind Date is cold and precise in what it says, Duncan neither confirms nor denies any of the details beyond what is told in that recording. It could have been a fabrication; but he plants the idea that he *might* have broken the most significant taboo of human civilization. Since then, Duncan's psychological research through sound, visual art, and performance has become far more sophisticated in approach and content. For example, there's his convoluted Pynchonesque album Our Telluric Conversation with CM von Hausswolff, and there's the masterful recapitulation of the sounds from the Stanford Linear Accelerator into The Crackling - a cavernous, sublime electric chorale which magnify the smallest of particles into massive discordant drones.
There Must Be A Way Across This River was a performance / installation that Duncan presented inside a refrigerated basement at a performance hall in Bologna, where he presented a slow-developing soundtrack of arctic drones layered with darkly vibrating shortwave patterns, whispered declarations from Duncan himself, and these strange violent bursts of electronic noise. While he never stated this to be the case, we wonder if he demanded that the audience be naked, as he has done for a handful of his other claustrophobic, black-box performances. That might have been even too cruel for Duncan! The sounds of There Must Be A Way Across This River are relatively subtle for Duncan's catalogue of work, but they are darkly evocative, eerie, bleak, and ominously threatening. Another very strong piece in his ever impressive body of work.
The flip side of the record is a strange collaboration between Duncan, Z'ev, and the EVP hunter Michael Esposito. Originally, Esposito, Duncan, and the medium Heidi Harman set out to make recordings in Duncan's childhood home outside of Chicago. Despite making arrangements with one of the occupants at the house, they were refused access, all the while Esposito was recording their conversations. During those recordings, 18 EVP invocations occurred, one of which addresses Duncan by name - an allegation that Harman confirmed through her own psychic contact. These 18 invocations were then given over to Z'ev who manipulated them into a suitably frightening set of interwoven drones and spectral undulations. If that particular EVP citation of Duncan's name is on these recordings, Z'ev has thoroughly eradicated the syntax into a slippery, ectoplasmic sound. It's one of the best things we've heard from Z'ev outside his kinetic percussive assaults, and rounds out a terrifyingly great piece of wax!
We could easily imagine the odd school children in the film The Wicker Man as being the tailor-made audience/participants for this 1969 educational record from the BBC Drama Workshop, the educational arm of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. These recordings were designed for creative movement and improvisation exercises for young school children, though it would be surprising to see a record for kids quite like this today.
With poetry written and recited by Robert Duncan and electronic music by David Cain, this is one of those Arcadian British recordings that are so often referenced audibly and visually by the hauntological Ghost Box label and the filmstrip nostalgia of Boards of Canada. Duncan's classically-trained oration evokes a romantic yet visceral natural imagery of slightly sinister undertones, while Cain's score is both alien and lilting, its robotic sing-song melodies sometimes wistful yet bracingly warped. For this recording a piece was done for each month and each season with the final track an instrumental culmination of all the musical themes simply called "The Year". Though we can see children of the time easily getting into the odd melodies to convey visual pantomimes of leaves and wind, we can only assume that some of the spoken imagery must have gone over their heads. "Falling leaves like Severed Hands", in "October" for instance; or descriptions of nightfall where the night is characterized as a predator and the day "as a fallow deer is bled"; or the lurid connotations of the poem, "March" where Duncan speaks of the Earth as a woman, and in a series of harvest ritual descriptions, to be woken, washed, dressed and then taken????
But what is admirable about the educational side of this recording is that it doesn't talk down to children or Disney-fy nature with anthropomorphic happy/sad emotions, but rather it emphasizes a more complex set of emotional tropes to act out like awakening, longing, fearfulness, loneliness, and indifference that points to a more mature and frank attitude toward the cycle of nature and the passing of time. Though we're not sure what kids today would make of its strange antiquated quaintness, for adults its perhaps a nostalgic trip back to a bygone era where there was government funded organizations that were allowed to produce such cool shit for kids, or at the very least plenty of cool interlude fodder here for DJs and mixtapes.
...not to be confused with the band called Herman Dune (which of course gets filed under 'H'). That group also happens to feature this fellow Mr. David Ivar Herman Dune (who gets filed under 'D'). Have I just confused things more???
Latest chunk of gloriously murky reverbed dark pop jangle from this LA trio, this one produced by Bobb Bruno of Best Coast, who knows a thing or two about reverb and echo, and helps Dunes swath their sound in as much as possible. A somewhat misleadingly dark and brooding intro gives way to something much more sunshiney and jangly, although that initial vibe runs throughout, with low slung Joy Division-y basslines, and washed out minor key guitars, that drift hauntingly but always eventually blossom into lush reverbed swirls of jangle pop.
The second track offers up more of that new wave-y bass, underpinning spidery echo drenched guitars and angelic vocal harmonies, like a more slowed down broody version of the opening track. The flipside, "Dream House" is in fact dreamy, but also dirgey and murky, the guitars muted, the rhythm softly propulsive, a little tribal, the bass fuzzy and distorted. The second half of the track shifts gears, and the sound transforms into something that sounds almost like African high life, with syncopated percussion and rhythmic vocal counterpoint, really cool.
Definitely for fans of Grass Widow, Best Coast, Brilliant Colors, Pens, Dum Dum Girls, and similarly reveby pop outfits...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Another batch of new releases from perpetually hyped vinyl label Mexican Summer, this one, the debut (?) from a band called Dunes, definitely travels a sonic path similar to many of their labelmates, but they do manage to twist the sound up into something a bit more their own. That said, if you dug all or most of the Mexican Summer releases so far: Kurt Vile, Pearl Harbor, Valet, Campfires, Woodsman, Washed Out, Weekend, Wooden Shjips, then this will most definitely be right up your alley.
It only takes a few seconds before your swept away by Dunes' murky retro pop, the first track super lo-fi, washed out and hazy, gloomy and haunting, liquid guitars shimmering in blacks and greys, heavily reverbed and distorted vocals, even at 45, this still sounds almost like it's at the wrong speed, ghostly and warped and warbly. The rest of the record though is not so dark and mysterious, in fact much of it sounds a bit like a more post punk Cocteau Twins, simple drumming, Joy Division-y basslines, guitars wreathed in effects, the vibe ethereal and atmospheric, the vocals slipping from abstract croon, to yelped and distorted. There's definitely a heavy sixties girl group feel, as is all the rave these days, but Dunes makes it more skeletal and spectral, occasionally transforming into something more dense and noisy and ramshackle, although it always seems to slip back into the glorious gloom.
The vocals are also quite reminiscent of Siouxsie, which then makes the Dunes sounds bit like a more jangly lo-fi garage rock post punk Zola Jesus, which is not a bad thing at all. The record finishes off much how it started, with another sprawl of muddy, blurred, ghostly low fidelity drift, a soft sonic crawl laced with scraped guitars and abstract percussion, distant barely there vocals, clouds of crystalline shimmer, and a gorgeous slow motion drone out ending.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Comes with a download card too...
In the last few years Dungen have gone from being a mysterious underground Swedish psych sensation to one of the most beloved bands in the indie music landscape. With 4 they prove they deserve all the acclaim and recognition that's come their way as they continue to evolve and expand their sonic horizons in such pleasing ways. It's not always how hard you hit but instead what kind of magic you can create with sound, thus this is probably the least rock sounding record Dungen have made, and we think the lush arrangements and warm texture suits them perfectly. While this could still pass for some lost gem from the Scandinavian psych underground of the early '70s there is something so unique and distinctive about their sound. They are one of those bands that after hearing only several seconds, their signature sound is already evident. But unlike folks such as Clinic who also have a sound we like but continue to make the same record over and over, Dungen have proven to be imaginative and skilled songwriters who move forward with each release, while remaining the Dungen we know and love. It's almost like they've been listening intently to the more nuanced and atmospheric psychedelic reissues from Ennio Morricone we've seen lately. Along with the new record by The Alps reviewed last list, this Dungen is more exciting evidence that that folks are still finding fresh (also lush and gorgeous) ways to enter a psychedelic state of mind. So great!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ready to space out and drift off into a Swedish psychedelic never-never land?? Well if you are, Dungen is back and will take you there. The sixth album from these Scandinavian faves delivers the usual Dungen goodies. 10 new tracks, some proggier, some soft-rockier, some straight-up poppier than others, all quite nice! Oh and let's not forget the searing psych guitar freakouts like the one that erupts in track 5, "Hogdalstoppen". So fans of Dungen will be pleased - and at this point we'd like to assume you all are already familiar with Dungen, and thus most likely fans... which means we can reduce redundancy review-wise by simply saying, yeah, get this, you'd like it! Dungen don't go in any strange new directions here, it's just more of what we dig about 'em, though perhaps compared to their previous album 4 (which was their fifth, oddly enough) they return a bit to "the rock" from where they were on that one. Certainly Dungen can make the loveliest of lovely music when they wanna, or indulge in urgent rhythms and bursts of distorted guitar jangle. And all of it is carefully arranged, everything in its place, even when they're doing the freakout thing. Somehow they have the ability, in the all-instrumental first track for example, to be both blissed out and kick up a garagey ruckus at the same time. Elsewhere, the bliss out is nothin' but, with gentle female vocals, strings, and handclaps keeping the beat.
Listening to this, for the first time we realized that Dungen reminds us a bit of XTC side project The Dukes Of Stratosphear; it's partly mainman Gustav Ejstes' voice (even in Swedish), partly his pop smarts, and of course partly Dungen's fantastical, effortless retroishness... but at this point maybe we can say that Dungen have moved from "retro" category into the one designated "timeless"!
NB. domestic vinyl out 10.5.10, cheaper than the import vinyl on Subliminal Sounds...
Now on vinyl!!!
Ready to space out and drift off into a Swedish psychedelic never-never land?? Well if you are, Dungen is back and will take you there. The sixth album from these Scandinavian faves delivers the usual Dungen goodies. 10 new tracks, some proggier, some soft-rockier, some straight-up poppier than others, all quite nice! Oh and let's not forget the searing psych guitar freakouts like the one that erupts in track 5, "Hogdalstoppen". So fans of Dungen will be pleased - and at this point we'd like to assume you all are already familiar with Dungen, and thus most likely fans... which means we can reduce redundancy review-wise by simply saying, yeah, get this, you'd like it! Dungen don't go in any strange new directions here, it's just more of what we dig about 'em, though perhaps compared to their previous album 4 (which was their fifth, oddly enough) they return a bit to "the rock" from where they were on that one. Certainly Dungen can make the loveliest of lovely music when they wanna, or indulge in urgent rhythms and bursts of distorted guitar jangle. And all of it is carefully arranged, everything in its place, even when they're doing the freakout thing. Somehow they have the ability, in the all-instrumental first track for example, to be both blissed out and kick up a garagey ruckus at the same time. Elsewhere, the bliss out is nothin' but, with gentle female vocals, strings, and handclaps keeping the beat.
Listening to this, for the first time we realized that Dungen reminds us a bit of XTC side project The Dukes Of Stratosphear; it's partly mainman Gustav Ejstes' voice (even in Swedish), partly his pop smarts, and of course partly Dungen's fantastical, effortless retroishness... but at this point maybe we can say that Dungen have moved from "retro" category into the one designated "timeless"!
Dungen's "Stadsvandringar" is Allan's new favorite cd (favorite new cd?). After a couple listens, he was well and truly hooked. Dungen is a Swedish band and what they play is Swedish retro psych-pop. Really really good Swedish retro psych-pop! This disc is, apparently, Dungen's second album after a vinyl-only effort that started a buzz. It looks and sounds perfectly '60s (or early '70s) with a front cover photo-collage in which wunderkind bandleader/singer/guitarist/songwriter Gustav Ejstes could be a dead ringer for a long-haired Owen Wilson. Musically, it sure casts a spell that that's definitely not-of-our-era... with sugary vocal refrains, wild fuzz guitars, Hammond B-3 organ riffing, lush arrangements, and some quite lovely flute bits (gettin' a bit proggy there, nothing wrong with that). Hints of trad Swedish folk music show up as well, not unlike that Arbete Och Fritid reissue we reviewed not long ago, one of Dungen's Svenska psych-prog-folk forefathers. The vocals are all in Swedish, and are sorta nasal, but good. Overall, this disc is just magical, convincingly retro yet standing on its own songwriting-wise. Melodically it's just as irresistable as the latest from Dungen's pal Bjorn Olsson, also reviewed here recently, but of course Dungen is more of a psychedelic rock thing. Imagine, maybe, if you can, something somewhere between the Kinks and Caravan, circa '69, with Swedish singing... Or just take Allan's word for it, this is great! We can only wonder why Dungen's retro-inclined Swedish labelmates like the Caesars and the Soundtrack Of Our Lives have gotten domestic US release and lots of attention, while this even better band is still only an import. Ah well, at least it's worth the higher import price!
NB. we should warn you that there's that annoying copy control technology on this cd (which means that 2 of the 11 songs aren't on Allan's iPod, boo hoo).
Back in stock! There was quite a run on these recently after Pitchfork gave this a rave review...hey didn't anyone read *our* review of this some months before? Anyway, we've got a few more (at a slightly better price, the label repressed 'em and made 'em cheaper too) and here's what we said about it before: Like fellow Swede and AQ-fave Bjorn Olsson, Gustav Ejstes is a brillant timewarped melody-maker. Though, his "solo" project Dungen sounds more like a band than Olsson's albums do. Wunderkind Ejstes is certainly enamored of '60s/'70s psych-pop and his obsession has borne some fabulous fruit. This is his third album to date (the first being a vinyl-only affair we have yet to hear, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list two years ago). So we were pleased to hear about the release of Ta Det Lugnt. It rocks more than the last one, being brasher, with more in the way of electric guitar frenzies in a Hendrix kinda style. But otherwise it's pretty similar, with Ejstes singing his hook-filled songs in the same somewhat nasal, Swedish langage voice as before. There's jazz jamming, folk frolics, and plenty of fuzz. A retro trip indeed from searing electric rippage to spaced-out, sentimental melodicism.
Dungen have done it once again. Gustav Ejstes' obsession with the sunshiney trippiness of '60s/'70s psychedelia is captured perfectly on Tio Bitar. Fuzzed to death Hagstrom guitar wails, delayed and reverbed Fender Rhodes, and beautiful lilting flute melodies...all the things we've come to expect from Dungen. The song writing is just as good as on Ta Det Lugnt, with maybe a slightly harder edge.
On the track "Ett Skal Att Trivas", the guitar line sounds almost Sabbathy, yet with such a keen pop sensibility that even those of us with cuddlier dispositions can't stop listening! The lead guitar work by Reine Fiske adds incredible energy to many of the tracks, a series of wonderful psych-pop gems, rife with extended jamming, TONS of instruments, and amazing little interludes. One of the highlights of this record is the textured and super lush production. You can almost imagine David Axelrod sneaking into the studio and laying his magic hands on the board giving it that unique warm and organic glow. All the instruments nestled in the mix just exactly where they should be with an overall sound both enticing and whimsical. For anyone who loves the Dungen sound, as we do, Tio Bitar is essential and we have a feeling this will win them a big batch of new fans as well.
The extra tracks from the extra disc that came with the domestic cd version of Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt now makes it to vinyl, in addition to the album itself (the double LP version of which is listed nearby). Five songs here, all of 'em awesome. Sorry it's a not-cheap import but if you're dedicated to your turntable then here you go.
Originally issued as a super limited -- 500 copies -- LP only pressing, the debut 2001 release from AQ (and everyone else's) Swedish retro psych pop faves Dungen has at last been reissued on compact disc in an expanded form by Subliminal Sounds! Containing only three very long tracks, each broken into 4-6 parts, their self-titled album might seem a bit of a disappointment to those who got turned on to them through their very popular third album Ta Det Lugnt, with its shorter, catchy pop and hard rock tunes. But we encourage you to give this disc a closer listen anyhow, as it's quickly grown on us. Each of the three tracks here meander in and out of song in an LSD trip-like whirl of whimsy. During one long improvised section you could swear you'd just plopped on Pink Floyd's Ummagumma to listen to "A Group Of Small Furry Animals..." (complete with animal sounds), at another moment the group sound like they're playing bossanovas at a 4 star hotel lounge (probably the low point on the record, it also lasts only briefly), at another point they're striking up a funky sitar led jam. Near the end of the second track the band all but drops out, leaving a reverb laden piano tinkling minor key Satie-esque melodies with sighing accompaniment from electric guitar. Super lovely. As alluded to above, we know that Dungen's Gustav Ejstes added material to the original LP tracks to fill out this cd reish, and he certainly made the old and new tracks flow together seamlessly. Those of you have have the second Dungen album Stadsvandringar will also experience a wee bit of deja vu, as some themes here were reprised for that album (which, Dungen fans who don't have that disc will be happy to hear is also slated for reissue this year sometime).
Sometimes it can take a while for word to get around (or for a record to become available here in the States)... Nicolai Dunger is a gentle Swedish singer-songwriter, and a personal fave of those fine Calexico fellows (in fact you might've seen him performing on tour with them). As you may or may not have noticed from the artists they've chosen to collaborate with and take on the road (Howe Gelb, Neko Case, Amor Belhom Duo, Lambchop, Richard Buckner, Lisa Germano, Francoize Breut and Nancy Sinatra) those Arizonan gents have mighty good taste! Anyways, this is a domestic reissue of Dunger's third album which originally came out on Dolores Recordings in 1999. He actually has seven full lengths which were released on almost as many labels (the first was back in 1996!). Sir Nicolai crafts wonderful, lilting folk pop songs perfect for drifting off to catnap-land in the shade of a big ol' weeping willow tree. You might think of him as the Swedish counterpart to Canadian troubadour Ron Sexsmith or perhaps a gutsier Kings Of Convenience. Each song beckons you to lean in close as he sings his thoughtful lyrics atop the wistful arrangements which on this album were played by fellow Swedes Soundtrack Of Our Lives and they lend a very subtle trippiness to the proceedings. So good!
Following in the footsteps of Phill Niblock and Jim O'Rourke, the Brooklyn based composer Kyle Bobby Dunn presents his own Young Person's Guide into an immersive arena of fluid minimalist gestures and post-classical ambience. Dunn sources his compositions from guitar, brass, and strings, some of which have been extracted from sessions with small ensembles of classically trained musicians; and everything is worked out in the digital studio, with the swells of a violin and timbre of a trombone elongated into introspective, somber compositions of elegant dronescaping. While this process does appear similar to Niblock's approach with his source material, Dunn is far more poetic and much more of a romantic than Mr. Niblock and presents bleary mirages revel in impressionistic images of cinematic landscapes. Tranquil organic tones manifest through gaseous shimmers, occasionally graced by a repetitive half-melodic interlude or a deep-end reverberant rumble. Much of Dunn's work could easily nestle next to one of Rhys Chatham's more placid guitar symphonies, or any of the cinematic soundscapists that Type has been championing for many years now, or the compositions of John Luther Adams, or even the narcoleptic mood engineering of Stars Of The Lid. Really beautiful stuff. Unfortunately, we only have limited stock on this title!
Kyle Bobby Dunn seems like quite a character. Photos of the Canadian ambient composer could easily stand in as an earnest dating profile image / avatar, imbued with a boyish charm and scholarly airs; yet whatever public image of poignant sincerity he seems to be cultivating is thrown completely out the window when it comes to the id-authored track titles like "Movement For The Completely Fucked," "Meadowfuck (Waltz Of The Nobodies)," and "An Excrement Suite." Given the fact that these tracks hold the exact same aesthetic scope of bleary ambience as the more sensible, allegorically charged titles like "Where Circles Never Become Circles" or "Canticle Of Votier's Flats," Dunn is obviously wanting his audience to ask the ever important question: "what the fuck?" It all may be calculated to expose the dorky / wonky bits of his personality, so that people don't assume he's just a dorky / wonky composer, but a fully-formed human being with thoughts, dreams, and ideas - some of which may be profoundly ridiculous. The sounds from "And The Infinite Sadness" are beautiful impressionist swells of tonal colors, billowing orchestrations, and elegant melancholy. Some of the tracks expose their instrumentation of guitars or horns or chamber ensembles, all of which are blurred within a luminous and richly shoegazing wash of sustained reverb and stately melodic / harmonic progressions. His work often gets compared to Stars Of The Lid; and yeah, And The Infinite Sadness is that good, perhaps his best release to date!
Ways Of Meaning is a beautifully serene ambient album from the classically trained composer Kyle Bobby Dunn. In sourcing much of his weightless tones, gossamer half-melodies, and immersive atmospherics from guitar and organ, Dunn develops a number of almost baroque flourishes throughout the haze and mist of his warm rich sounds that lean more to the sound of a medieval chorale pitched at quarter-speed than to the contemporary narcoleptic sounds of today's ambient practitioners. The looping interplay between the golden guitar tones on his "Canyon Meadow" begins to resemble an impressionist orchestration for French horns, albeit run through William Basinski's tape machinations that push all of the sounds in and out of focus. His charmingly titled "Movement For The Completely Fucked" is hardly the epithet that one might assume; rather, Dunn's placid composition for somber guitar mesmerism offers solace to whomever may be deemed completely fucked. Fans of Eno's Music For Airports, anything from Stars Of The Lid, and even some of the contemplative works of Arvo Part would be well served to check out this album. Vinyl only!
The former Bungle and current Fantomas bassist unleashes the second album of spazz-jazz from his Trio-Convulsant (following up one from long ago that we can't get anymore). Ranging from hard (almost metallic) to soft (cocktails, anyone?), and generally pretty high on the notes-played-per-unit-of-time count. Complex compositions and loose improv coexist here, and the playing is at a very high level, from Dunn as well as his cohorts Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Ches Smith (drums). If you have Zorn, Cline, Ribot, that sort of stuff in yr "jazz" collection, you'll find that the Trio-Convulsant fits in there quite nicely too.
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Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, with Adam Levy on guitar and Kenny Wollesen on drums make up the Trio-Convulsant.
One of three new releases from local label Acephale Winter, this one possibly the most notable, as it's the debut release from the man behind the label, and apparently, he almost didn't let us hear it, but did once he was assured that our tastes in black metal ran very much toward the damaged and demented, and while this might not be as fucked up as Benighted Leams (but then what is!), it is pretty strange, and seriously far out, definitely a primo slab of outsider blackness, as is evidenced but the first few minutes, an intro of sorts that involves field recordings of rain and storms, dense rumbling drones, haunting synths, moody piano figures, a killer swath of crumbling distortion, even some strange samples, all of it leading up to the first song proper, which is a noisy, chaotic beat, EXTREMELY lo-fi, the guitars an insectoid swarm, the drums a barely there pulse, mostly just the snare audible over the churning blackbuzz din, but then some even weirder stuff starts to happen, the sounds blur and bleed, the buzzing becomes suffused with organ thrum, the vocals transformed into a sort of cult-like chant, the whole thing woozy and psychedelic, before lumbering back into more blasting stumble and howl.
Some of the other tracks are much more straight up raw black primitivism, but others are wild concoctions of atonal clean vocals, programmed machine like rhythms, and squalls of guitarnoise, there are weird lullaby like stretches that almost sound like renaissance faire children's music, there are haunting dronescapes, there are warped, blown out slowcore dirges that almost sound like Nirvana's Bleach demos, slowed way down, and doused in blown out distortion, and the record bookends with another blast of stormy field recorded ambience and a seriously confusional brief bit of sonic schmaltz right at the end. Killer stuff, warped and WTF for sure. Definitely excited to hear more...
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