The first nine tracks of 1000 Fragments are not what you would expect from the Ryoji Ikeda of today. His contemporary installation work and accompanying audio documents have been researching pure frequency manipulation and psychoacoustic delirium with occasional bursts of Pan Sonic / Alva Noto ventures of post-techno rhythm. Albums like Dataplex or Test Pattern are uncompromisingly clean and conceptually simple; but in 1995, Ryoji Ikeda likened himself more a media provocateur than a minimalist technician. 1000 Fragments was originally released through Ikeda's own CCI label well over a decade ago and now enjoys the re-issue treatment care of Raster Noton. Those first nine tracks represent one of three distinct styles of work on 1000 Fragments, and collectively manifest as a frenzied media collage of disembodied voices, electro-shock noise bursts, and skittered militant rhythms, paralleling the dystoptic sound of Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio from that same time period. The second section explores more sedate dronefield territory, still emerging from a post-industrial framework (again think Illusion Of Safety and The Hafler Trio albeit in their alchemical and gnostic guises) whose beating phasepatterns upon long-form tones refined from shortwave datastreaming anticipated where he would venture in many years later. The third chapter to 1000 Fragments is a subtle composition that weaves together the aerated reverb from what could be some forgotten choral piece by Ligetti. This finale is surprisingly delicate and beautiful for an artist best known for his cold, hard edges of pure electronica, although it has to be said that a track such as this does look forward to Ikeda's orchestral detour Op. While never intended to be a cohesive body of work, 1000 Fragments is an excellent overview of the origins of one of our favorite sound artists.
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Following Vaisanen, Ryoji Ikeda's contribution to the series is a wicked example of bruitist electronica whereby a sine wave blasting a headrattling throb evolves slowly into Pan Sonic style 'grooves'. Its end result is quite simply painful.
We're always excited when a new disc from Ryoji Ikeda appears. As far as we're concerned, this Japanese electronic composer is the master of the "clicks and cuts", minimal-micro-sonic scene. And Dataplex is his latest masterpiece, a twenty-tracker with titles like "data.complex", "data.googolplex", "data.superhelix", "data.vertex". With each data dot shift, clinical little sounds that clearly come from a computer -- datastreams it would seem, that's the idea here -- are presented and then worked into rhythmically complex techno music. It's not exactly "dance" music though, but these carefully placed, computer-generated clicks and whirrs and glitches and high frequency pulses you could maybe THINK about dancing to... certainly they're something for your brain to marvel at, edging closer to seizure as the album progresses, though Ikeda gives some relief with a more ambient ten-minute track near the end of the album. It all starts off with sounds that are almost raw data, morphed into music as Ikeda, track by track, engineers more and more 'plexity into the disc, working with a purity of sound and at so microscopic of a scale that Ikeda and his music seemingly belong in the science laboratory. Yet, at the same time, he breathes a lot of life into these little bits of information, making them dance even if you don't. Recommended -- and don't let what's stickered to the cd tray scare you off: "Caution! This cd contains specific waveform data that performs a data-read test for optical drives. The last track will cause some cd players to experience playback errors, with no damage to equipment." We love warnings on cds like that!
Yes indeed, after his successful foray into orchestral instrumentation on 2002's Touch release Op., long time fans of Ikeda (like us) should be happy that he's still also forging ahead in the digital realm, Dataplex being a fine successor to such past Ikeda classics as +/- and Matrix.
"Matrix" completes the trilogy of releases that Japanese electronica-experimentalist Ryoji Ikeda has put out through the Touch label (also including "0ÉC" and "+/-"). Inspite of what the title may imply, Ikeda hasn't taken to computer-assisted wire stunts, battling Keanu Reeves in a kung fu competition for the title of Cyber-Christ, though we think that the first half of "Matrix" could use a little more high-flying, ass-kicking action...of which, thankfully, there's plenty on the second half! Let's explain: "Matrix" is a double cd that explores a conceptual relationship between the body and architecture within a controlled sonic field. Disc one concentrates on the architectural metaphor as Ikeda unleashes two closely matched sine wave frequencies which quickly fill up any enclosed space which can offer body-cavity-churning standing waves or warm blissful drones, depending on where you stand in that room. An interesting conceptual piece but one that you might not listen to too many times...
Disc two, on the other hand, is the reason to pick this up. Ikeda explores the idea of broadcasting his sine waves through the much more complex architectural system of the body, which with its amorphous surfaces and natural electical field reacts in a much more interesting way than a boxy cube. Ikeda begins the second half of "Matrix" with some amplifications of his own heart pulse, then phases in top quality Raster / Noton digital rhythms in only the low and high frequencies, sounding much closer to Mika Vainio's earlier recordings. So, focusing on disc two, this turns out to be a pretty exceptional release! Regard disc one as a bonus disc of conceptual-ambient stuff, with the main disc (disc two) being completely amazing and powerful clicking and humming "dance music". His tones are so pure and his sense of dynamics, contrasts and rhythms so exciting that this is already Allan's favorite "party" album of the year...
Joking about "The Matrix" aside, one can imagine that this style of "techno" should have been used on the soundtrack to it (or better yet, "Run Lola Run") but I don't know if theatre audiences would have survived. Certainly the action on the screen would have taken on secondary importance!
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Limited edition cd of Ikeda's contribution to VRPO Radio's live series! Variations on +/- and Headphonics plus an unreleased track. Pure, delicate tones of ultra high and low frequencies shifting against each other with Pan Sonic style clinical beats appearing late in the tracks...excellent!
Ryoji Ikeda scored the soundtrack for CS Leigh's film See You At The Regis Debray; and this two disc set is the entire soundtrack to the film split into two sections, approximately 45 minutes each. We've not seen the film; but from what we can gather, it describes a few days in 1969 when Andreas Baader (of Baader-Meinhof fame) spent with the French intellectual Regis Debray, while Baader was on the run from the German authorities. Debray himself had quite a storied past, having spent time in a Bolivian jail for associating with Che Guevera.
Ikeda's soundtrack begins as you would expect any Ikeda album to start: with a slow-building ascension of precisely micro-shifting digital tones. Ikeda cuts to a collage of the jarring ring of telephones that dissolves into a repetitive strum of a low-slung guitar that sounds very much like a Morricone sample from The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. This detours into a subterranean field recording of various clanks, muffled rumblings, and distant voices. Then an elegiac chorale of reverb saturated drones with snippets of radio transmission (bells? gongs? chimes? those same digital tones?) completes the first disc. The second disc returns to that Morricone riff, only flushed out this time, given more of an Achim Reichel energy of bad-ass Western twang matching futurist arpeggiation. These 15 - 20 minutes of the soundtrack are the highlight of the album, and make us wish Ikeda would do more of this type of work. The rest of the second disc consists of an eerie collage of someone panting heavily transitioning to a collage of chimpmunked AM radio hits then to dissonant guitar squalor sort of like early Nurse With Wound, before turning to a collection of old Spanish political speeches, perhaps Che Guevera?
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Been waiting for this for a while, the new Raster-Noton disc from Japanese electronic artist Ryoji Ikeda! There's a bunch of other new Raster titles that we're excited about too (Coh, Alva Noto, Byetone, etc.) but this is the one we were anticipating the most. Sure, lots of folks make electronic music of the experimental glitchy, clicky variety - like many of Ikeda's just-mentioned labelmates - but in our book, Ikeda is the KING. His precision architect(r)onic computerized clicks and cuts are on a whole 'nother level, totally hallucinatory and 3-D spatial. An immersive environment you enter at your own risk (of epileptic seizure, perhaps). But if you pass the test (of his relentless electronic pitter patter patterns) you'll be entranced and entangled.
And we're pleased to report that Test Pattern is yet another strobing, brutally stereo display of his skills. 16 binaryily named tracks, "Test Pattern #0001" to "Test Pattern #0000", that provide prickly pleasure with rapid, stuttery nano-beats, like a frantic Geiger counter on the fritz, or some sort of Morse code madness. Ikeda's techniques include both minimalist repetition, and sudden shifts; his skittering, synthetic slices of sound arranged in complex, rhythmic patterns, an omnidirectional aural assault of high pitched, panicked, hissing sine tones, and deeper bass hums n' buzzing drones... it's a pretty incredible collection of constructions, vibrant and varied within Ikeda's self-imposed electronic boundaries and specific sets of data-based building materials. As ever with Ikeda's output, recommended.
Strange that a piece by Ryoji Ikeda would get released on vinyl, but Staalplaat has always been known to defy convention. Originally released as a double 3"cd back in 1998, "Time / Space" found Ikeda first exploring the now commonplace glitch 'n' sinewave agenda. "Space" is incredibly quiet with deep low end rumbles, unwavering midrange tones, terse pinprick pings, and
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When he released +/-, he totally broke new ground for minimalist digital music. He was then strangely criticised for the accessiblity of his next recording, 0 Degrees C. Time and Space finds a middleground. He is able to create a deep and complex field of sound with the very simple elements of tones and clicks.
We're used to hearing clinical clicks from Japanese electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda -- so what's this then? 21st century classical, all acoustic stringed instruments, no electronics at all?? Yes, and it's great. With help from Belgian chamber-prog group Art Zoyd, Ikeda has crafted a gorgeous soundtrack-like suite of droning string bliss, that's far from the chopped-up aesthetic of his earlier use of orchestral elements in the electronic realm.
Two years ago, Ikeda released "Matrix" -- an amazing double cd split between pure sinewave aggrevation on one disc and smooth, post-techno click 'n' grooves on the other. While that album was the conclusion of a trilogy of electronic works that also included "0 Degrees Celsius" and "+/-," it remains unclear if the arrival of "op." also marks a disavowal of electronics altogether (as good as this is, we hope not). While the German avant-garde ensemble Zeitkratzer have done very well for themselves in translating electronoise works by John Duncan and Merzbow into atonal orchestrations for classical instruments, Ikeda's "classical" debut bares little resemblance to anything he's done in the past. No cyclical pulses. No clinical precision. No irritants to speak of. Instead, Ikeda's compositions for strings (one piece for 9 strings and the rest for quartet) gracefully glide in and out of complex timbres, with plenty of breathing room in between all of the harmonic tones. Indeed, the closest resemblance to Ikeda's past work is how initial attack of bows on strings can sound uncannily like the electronically-generated tones on the sinewave half of "Matrix"... Soon they reveal themselves for the acoustic orchestra instruments they are, Ikeda apparently using them to tap into the emotions of sadness and majesty, which rock musicians also have appropriated from romantic composers. Yet, with its stoic simplicity and stately pacing, "op." also mirrors the fascination that fellow minimalist Bernhard Gunter holds for Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono, although Gunter's approach has remained within the scope of sampling and hasn't yet arrived at full blown orchestrations.
As beautiful and compelling as Ikeda's "op." is, Ikeda has to ask himself how he can build a language that not only reflects back upon successes of his previous electronic works but also understand the peculiarities intrinsic to this form of composition. He's already issued vague statements about his electronic works building "invisible patterns filling the listening space." Is this a strong enough bridge between Ikeda's electronic masterpieces and the possible future for other classical compositions? Only time will tell...
"Cyclo" is the inevitable collaboration between glitch maniplulators Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai, who quite obviously state that "the error itself becomes the topic for this release." This album sounds exactly as anyone familiar with both Ikeda and
As with the packaging of the "20' to 2000" series on Raster with the then little seen clam shell cases, Raster has found a nifty new prefabricated case that houses the CD tightly inside until the adjoining plastic lever is pulled down, pushing the disc out of its case (like a manual toaster. There's probably a name for it... but we'll call it the Prest-O-Matic for now
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We were pretty into the Ikonika tracks we'd heard, especially on that kick ass Hyperdub comp. And we were pretty thrilled to discover that Ikonika was in fact a woman, a rarity in the dubstep boy's club for sure, and while many of us lean toward the harder and heavier, darker and deeper, in dance music, there are definitely some exceptions, the party music of Zomby being one, and Ikonika being another, her music is definitely dubstep, but it's weirdly retro, definitely reminding us of 8-bit video game music, and at the same time sort of futuristic, but that cheesy sci-fi future imagined by any thousands of late night straight to video movies. Apparently she used to be a drummer in a post hardcore band too, not sure that's relevant, but it's definitely cool!
A dizzying hybrid of spaced out dubbed out minimal electronica and old school synth pop, a little hip hop too, synths all over the place, sometimes glimmery and shimmery, other times ominous and foreboding and a bit Carpenter-ish, creating a weirdly lush backdrop for Ikonika's retro futurist beats, from skeletal skitter, to groovy stutter, to total eighties new wave MTV, to fuzzy funky groove, to pulsing house-y thump, the beats and synths constantly tangling, often locking into cool synchronous rhythm, but just as often colliding wildly in total chaotic video game dance floor mayhem. All the tracks here rule, our favorites are the ones that sound either like Commodore 64 jams, music from some bootleg Japanese Dance Dance Revolution knockoff, or the credits from some ridiculous eighties teen horror film, which thankfully is most of 'em.
Long, long ago, we reviewed this band's complex second album, 1972's Ys, calling it "crazy '70s Italian prog" and remarking upon the band's "nutzoid sci-fi keyboard attack". A super rad record, we think. Same goes for Sirrio 2222, Il Balletto Di Bronzo's first album, from 1970, now reissued on cd, which is a bit different but equally cool. Proggy, sure, and sometimes also "nutzoid", but not quite so dark and intense as Ys, this one's more '60s flower power psych pop sounding, but super fuzzy, and often heavy like early Led Zep. Yep, proto-metal fans will like that there's lots of lumbering low-end (the wonderfully titled "Eh Eh Ah Ah" incorporates a fat, bluesy "Mississippi Queen" like riff, ferinstance), while prog weirdos will dig, uh, all the prog weirdness that pops up, amidst the pop. There are moments of over the top acid rock freakery, others of twee folk melody or romantic classical chamber-rock, and others of cowbell-knocking "hairy funk" groove. A baroque 'n' roll classic, really. Italians DO do it better, when it comes to '70s prog rockin'!
Every now and then we like to spring some crazy '70s Italian prog on y'all just to see who can take it. We're not just talking Goblin (though we love Goblin), or any of the more "mainstream" Italian prog acts of the period (PFM, Le Orme, Banco), who were cool but didn't go far beyond the Yes/Genesis/King Crimson template. We're talking weirder stuff like Museo Rosenbach, New Trolls, Osage Tribe, I Teoremi, and Area. We hope to soon have some copies of the cds by an amazing band called Osanna (possibly Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band!!) but while we wait for those, we did manage to bring in a few of this, the 2nd album by another fave Italian group of ours called Il Balletto Di Bronzo. Sure, their nutzoid sci-fi keyboard attack will bring to mind ELP, but you'll also think of Magma (and their descendants Shub-Niggurath and Koenjihyakkei as well). Complex, powerful, heavy, precise yet darkly psychedelic, Ys (from 1972) is one of those timeless pieces of rock n' roll art that's definitely very '70s yet not entirely dated: you could imagine a Laddio Bollocko or Tarantula Hawk kicking out these jams, that is, except for the occasional operatic vocal chorus. This album's five long songs (plus a bonus track), with their acid guitar action, haunting female vocals, droning keyboards, martial drumming, baroque/classical motifs, and weird changes, are just about as good as over-the-top Italian prog can get, and that's pretty damn good. That is, if you are willing to get into it like we are. A top ten prog album (if Aquarius had a prog top ten, and please don't ask us for one, we'll be arguing for weeks).
How To Assess Your Damages is record number two from these Colorado post hardcore heavies, released on the same label that gave us the recent records from Lark's Tongue (see elsewhere on the aQ site). Il Cattivo features members of Planes Mistaken For Stars (whom we love, but who for some reason have never made it on to our list ever), and traffic in a dense flurry of dueling guitars, mathy drumming and howled vox, their sound a brooding heavy noise rock, with a dash of screamo, and plenty of classic hard rock melody, as well as pop smarts, not to mention a particular strain of Midwestern rock that some aQ-ers are a bit obsessed with to this day, we're talking about bands like Paw and Kill Creek, their hard rocking indie rock flecked with a bit of twang, and a bit of Southern rock, which seems to make it into the music of Il Cattivo as well. The dual guitars here mean the heavy parts are dense and layered, and also means there are plenty of killer guitar harmonies. The vocals too are surprisingly varied, a super commercial croon one second, a throat shredding howl the next. Some of these songs are crazy polished and poppy, and it's not hard to imagine them on the radio or MTV (if they still played music), but then even the catchiest song will splinter into a wild squall of heaviness, and vice versa, the band will lay down some furious metallic mathiness, only to inject it with a heaping dose of impossible catchiness, which makes for a seriously sweet combo. It's definitely easy to hear Il Cattivo as a logical extension of Planes Mistaken For Stars, just a bit more melodic, a bit more polished, and with some serious kick ass songwriting chops!
All it takes is a handful of listens and you'll be obsessed, seriously, dig into the samples below and you won't be sorry. We were just gonna give this a quick review, but with every listen, we found ourselves digging it more and more and wanting to listen to pretty much nothing else. WAY recommended!!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!
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The Maestro strikes again! You should already know prolific South Indian film score composer Maestro Ilaiyaraaja and his "Electronic Pop Sound" from a couple Finders Keepers compilations we've highlighted: his own Solla Solla, and also the one featuring singer K.S. Chithra, with music by the Maestro. If you thought those two discs were over the top and irresistible, just get a load of this new one! (And even if you missed those, well, you probably have an idea of what we're talking about, if you've been exposed to any Bollywood/Kollywood/Lollywood craziness, as represented by other recent collections like Bollywood Bloodbath and Life Is Dance.)
Compared to those other Ilaiyaraaja's, this is similar, but with perhaps even more "video-game-iness" in the goofily orchestrated mix. It's VERY '80s electro synth sounding, and groovy too, as the subtitle promises. There's a big kitsch/cheese factor no doubt, but that's a big part of this genre's charms, really! Plus, this shit's tight, every element - electronic beats and sweet vocals and synthesized string sections and ethnic instruments and startling sound FX - in its place, everything and everybody dancing to the tunes of the Maestro. Hott stuff. 16 tracks, 65 minutes, you'll be grinning gleefully the whole time.
And you gotta love the cover, right? Icing on the cake of this swank trifold digipak, which includes a 30 page booklet with info on each of the films from which music was taken.
Yay, more delightful music from Ilaiyaraaja, illustrious composer for South India's Kollywood (not Bollywood, but close) film industry. Finders Keepers / B-Music has previously brought us a couple other comps full of Ilaiyaraaja's tremendously enjoyable and unusually arranged tunes, so hopefully you know all about him already and are eager for more, 'cause look out, here's another seventeen tracks of the man's colorful and creative East-West mashup music, circa the synth-pop Eighties (his prime), full of electro funk drum machine grooves, '80s future shock synthesizer (Yamaha DX7 keyboard in the house!), orchestral flourishes, and the often amorously impassioned vocalisations of a variety of famous playback singers including K.S. Chitra, aka the "Tamil Nightingale".
Ilaiyaraaja himself can lay claim to the honorific "The Maestro". He's also been called "The Crown Prince Of Tamil Pop", and it's easy to hear why from this disc of so very lively and infectious and not overly-serious music, joyful songs designed to get characters in Tamil films - and maybe you too - singing and dancing.
Apparently Ilaiyaraaja, currently 69 years of age, has written/recorded over 4,500 songs in his career (and counting), so we can probably look forward to more collections from Finders Keepers and other equally hip labels, but don't let this one slip by, it's got a lot of gems on it. Imagine if Axel F went to India...
Extensive, interesting, informative (as usual) liner notes from DJ Andy Votel are included, the disc having been compiled by Votel and Doug Shipton.
Import double vinyl version also forthcoming, by the way, we should have that in time for our next list.
Yay!! Now in stock, in quantity, on nice fancy import vinyl, in two parts. And each of the lps contains a bonus track not found on the compact disc version! Here's what we said about the cd:
If any album on this week's list is gonna put a smile on your face and spring in your step, this is the one! First off, we love Bollywood stuff to begin with, and then that this was curated by the Finders Keepers / B-Music folks, you know it's gonna be good... And indeed the stuff they've dug up for this compilation is so fantastic, fun, energetic, absurd, over the top, and catchy, yeah it's Bollywood at its best. Well, except that actually to be precise it's KOLLYWOOD not Bollywood, 'cause this is is all music from films produced by the Tamil-language film industry, based not in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) but in the South Indian city of Chenai (formerly Madras), in a neighborhood called Kodambakkam, thus "Kollywood" (and remember, there's also Pakistan's Lollywood too, based in Lahore, and Nollywood in Nigeria...).
In any case, there's 16 tracks here [18 on the vinyl, spread over the 2 lps], each more groovy and insane than the last. Furthermore, they're all the work of composer Ilaiyaraaja (meaning, Prince), aka The Maestro, a very creative and hard working fellow indeed, responsible for the scores to over 900 films in his long career!!! Thanks to Finder Keepers, who've selected these gems, sourced from rare 45 rpm singles and such, we're now big fans. Reminds us A LOT of one of our very favorite Bollywood and/or Kollywood collections ever, an all time AQ fave disc in any genre in fact: the long out of print Vijaya Anand "Dance Raja Dance" cd on Luaka Bop from years ago, another amazing batch of songs from South Indian musical cinema.
Solla Solla, like Dance Raja Dance, Dance, is simply irresistible. A lively, genre defying mash up of Eastern and Western, kitschy pop and chaotic exotica, psychedelic sometimes intentionally, sometimes otherwise, full of sudden surprises and sweeping melodies, crazy rhythms, wild vocal outbursts, funky fat synths, big bands doing disco beats... Wow!!
These songs, presumably for whirling, ADD action sequences / dance numbers, often feature quasi-orgasmic murmurs and squeals from the female lead vocalists, giggles and screams as well. Along with plenty of lovely singing, too, of course. And from the men, lots of "Huuh!!" and "Hey!!". Quite bombastic, and ecstatic, and definitely dance-floor DJ fodder for when you really want the party to get goin'. Absolutely delightful!!!
Again, all music composed, produced, and arranged by Ilaiyaraaja. Various veteran "playback singers" like S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and T.M. Soundararajan appear on here. The liner notes by Doug Shipton go into depth about Ilaiyaraaja's career, and plenty of photos/graphics are provided.
Yay!! Now in stock, in quantity, on nice fancy import vinyl, in two parts. And each of the lps contains a bonus track not found on the compact disc version! Here's what we said about the cd:
If any album on this week's list is gonna put a smile on your face and spring in your step, this is the one! First off, we love Bollywood stuff to begin with, and then that this was curated by the Finders Keepers / B-Music folks, you know it's gonna be good... And indeed the stuff they've dug up for this compilation is so fantastic, fun, energetic, absurd, over the top, and catchy, yeah it's Bollywood at its best. Well, except that actually to be precise it's KOLLYWOOD not Bollywood, 'cause this is is all music from films produced by the Tamil-language film industry, based not in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) but in the South Indian city of Chenai (formerly Madras), in a neighborhood called Kodambakkam, thus "Kollywood" (and remember, there's also Pakistan's Lollywood too, based in Lahore, and Nollywood in Nigeria...).
In any case, there's 16 tracks here [18 on the vinyl, spread over the 2 lps], each more groovy and insane than the last. Furthermore, they're all the work of composer Ilaiyaraaja (meaning, Prince), aka The Maestro, a very creative and hard working fellow indeed, responsible for the scores to over 900 films in his long career!!! Thanks to Finder Keepers, who've selected these gems, sourced from rare 45 rpm singles and such, we're now big fans. Reminds us A LOT of one of our very favorite Bollywood and/or Kollywood collections ever, an all time AQ fave disc in any genre in fact: the long out of print Vijaya Anand "Dance Raja Dance" cd on Luaka Bop from years ago, another amazing batch of songs from South Indian musical cinema.
Solla Solla, like Dance Raja Dance, Dance, is simply irresistible. A lively, genre defying mash up of Eastern and Western, kitschy pop and chaotic exotica, psychedelic sometimes intentionally, sometimes otherwise, full of sudden surprises and sweeping melodies, crazy rhythms, wild vocal outbursts, funky fat synths, big bands doing disco beats... Wow!!
These songs, presumably for whirling, ADD action sequences / dance numbers, often feature quasi-orgasmic murmurs and squeals from the female lead vocalists, giggles and screams as well. Along with plenty of lovely singing, too, of course. And from the men, lots of "Huuh!!" and "Hey!!". Quite bombastic, and ecstatic, and definitely dance-floor DJ fodder for when you really want the party to get goin'. Absolutely delightful!!!
Again, all music composed, produced, and arranged by Ilaiyaraaja. Various veteran "playback singers" like S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and T.M. Soundararajan appear on here. The liner notes by Doug Shipton go into depth about Ilaiyaraaja's career, and plenty of photos/graphics are provided.
If any album on this week's list is gonna put a smile on your face and spring in your step, this is the one! First off, we love Bollywood stuff to begin with, and then that this was curated by the Finders Keepers / B-Music folks, you know it's gonna be good... And indeed the stuff they've dug up for this compilation is so fantastic, fun, energetic, absurd, over the top, and catchy, yeah it's Bollywood at its best. Well, except that actually to be precise it's KOLLYWOOD not Bollywood, 'cause this is is all music from films produced by the Tamil-language film industry, based not in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) but in the South Indian city of Chenai (formerly Madras), in a neighborhood called Kodambakkam, thus "Kollywood" (and remember, there's also Pakistan's Lollywood too, based in Lahore, and Nollywood in Nigeria...).
In any case, there's 16 tracks here, each more groovy and insane than the last. Furthermore, they're all the work of composer Ilaiyaraaja (meaning, Prince), aka The Maestro, a very creative and hard working fellow indeed, responsible for the scores to over 900 films in his long career!!! Thanks to Finder Keepers, who've selected these gems, sourced from rare 45 rpm singles and such, we're now big fans. Reminds us A LOT of one of our very favorite Bollywood and/or Kollywood collections ever, an all time AQ fave disc in any genre in fact: the long out of print Vijaya Anand "Dance Raja Dance" cd on Luaka Bop from years ago, another amazing batch of songs from South Indian musical cinema.
Solla Solla, like Dance Raja Dance, Dance, is simply irresistible. A lively, genre defying mash up of Eastern and Western, kitschy pop and chaotic exotica, psychedelic sometimes intentionally, sometimes otherwise, full of sudden surprises and sweeping melodies, crazy rhythms, wild vocal outbursts, funky fat synths, big bands doing disco beats... Wow!!
These songs, presumably for whirling, ADD action sequences / dance numbers, often feature quasi-orgasmic murmurs and squeals from the female lead vocalists, giggles and screams as well. Along with plenty of lovely singing, too, of course. And from the men, lots of "Huuh!!" and "Hey!!". Quite bombastic, and ecstatic, and definitely dance-floor DJ fodder for when you really want the party to get goin'. Absolutely delightful!!!
Again, all music composed, produced, and arranged by Ilaiyaraaja. Various veteran "playback singers" like S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and T.M. Soundararajan appear on here. The liner notes by Doug Shipton go into depth about Ilaiyaraaja's career, and plenty of photos/graphics are provided.
FYI, we also have (or can get) this on import vinyl, in two volumes, $24.00 each. Vol.1 contains a bonus track.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Ildjarn is a black metal legend. A recently released tribute featured a who's who of the black metal elite paying homage: Leviathan, Xasthur, Forgotten Tomb, Nachtmystium, Urfaust, Azaghal, Grimfaug and more. And rightfully so. Who is more grim, more cult, more legendary than Ildjarn? Having performed as a member of Thou Shalt Suffer and Sort Vokter it wasn't until Ildjarn struck out on his own that he truly discovered his muse, which led him to produce a truly infamous body of work, from super lo-fi black metal buzz to ambient synthesizer suites. This double disc collection compiles the first recorded Ildjarn material from 1992, the mega rare 1993 demo, and the Minnesjord - The Dark Soil demo as well as a bunch of unreleased stuff as well.
The sound of Ildjarn is ultra, ultra, ULTRA lo-fi black metal buzz, with blown out guitars, uncertain drumming, howled demon vocals, with that totally raw practice space recording feel. The really cool thing about Ildjarn Is Dead, is the multiple versions / parts of each song, sometimes as many as 7 or 8 versions, each with varying amounts of fidelity, each it's own sort of lo-fi recording, some muddy and murky, some brittle and high end, resulting in a constantly fluctuating recording quality that is much an instrument as the drums or the guitar. This is the blackest of metal, think Darkthrone, Mayhem, but dig even deeper, closer to the pits of hell, deeper into the black of night, grim and raw and cult as fuck.
There are some brief glimpses of some of the more avant Ildjarn to come later, with some interludes of gristly Earth-like distorted guitar drones complete with record crackle and a strange almost classical / New Age sounding coda, with sweeping synths, and haunting disembodied vocals.
Disc two includes more than 20 minutes of unfinished material 1993-1994, which is completely amazing, some parts are just bass and drums, a skeletal outline of a never realized track, some are fully realized blasts of buzz and hiss, some have strange dropouts and tape warble, giving the whole thing an inadvertently avant sheen, like some strange unearthed decaying tapes a la Basinski (which I guess is sort of what they actually are).
Amazingly packaged and gorgeously printed. An oversized fold out sleeve, printed in black, grey and silver, with a huge insert that features a massive sixteen thousand-word last statement written by Ildjarn, also included are lyrics to all the tracks and the cd sleeves within include the original artwork and more text. Absolutely beautiful. It's released by Northern Heritage, the label that put out the brilliant Crushing The Holy Trinity compilation a while back, packaged in a similarly oversized sleeve, although the design on the Ildjarn is a lot more subtle and visually stunning.
And if you're still not sure if this is essential, how about a few words of warning from Ildjarn himself?
"Before purchasing this product you should take great care in observing the following requirements in relation to it:
After long-term use of this product you may experience increased hatred, thus a lust to kill partcipants of your own breed subsequent to and while operating this product may consequently occur. The copyright owner of this audio product and all its accompanying propaganda declares that it is in compliance with the essential requirements of antilife, and hereby assumes all liability for any injury or death caused by the use of this product. If inexperienced with the kind of hateful and suicidal contents distributed through this product, you should seek the advice of experienced misanthropists and death-worshipers before operation, to assure proper use and to prevent the interference of alien thoughts originating from philanthropists, which will most likely harm the process that may be the result of using this specific product. This product is furthermore solely intended for use in a solitary confinement, and should not be subjected to any other use. Following these rules, this recording and the accompanying words will provide a lifetime of pure frustration, caused by the newly acquired knowledge of the insufficiencies and absurdities of earthly life. If failing in the harsh process of submitting to these rules subsequent to your purchase, users are strongly urged to give away this product to a being willing to obey to the unwritten laws conceived by the sources of death's path, and ultimately the annihilation of the self. Again, be sure to consider all the above requirements prior to your purchase."
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If you have never heard of Rikki Ililonga or his influential band, Musi-O-Tunya, you are not alone. As it goes in the rediscovery of important music especially outside North America, the true innovators of a sound and a scene are often the last to be rediscovered, and Rikki Ililonga is a case in point. Followers of the aQ list have no doubt been aware of the recent spate of "ZamRock" reissues, most lately, from Witch, and Tirogo, and farther back, gems from Ngozi Family, Chrissy Zebby Tembo, The Peace, and Amanaz, that really have shown the influence of Jimi Hendrix and heavy psych on this part of Southern Africa. Well, Rikki Ililonga through his band Musi-O-Tunya and subsequent solo records were there from the beginning, releasing the very first pop and rock records after Zambia gained its independence, thus pioneering the birth of "ZamRock".
The Now-Again label has done an incredible job of compiling two discs of recordings from the years 1973 through 1976, one disc devoted to Musi-O-Tunya, and the second disc to Ililonga's solo recordings. The first disc traces the band's roots from its Afro-beat beginnings with bass and horn funk rhythms to more lo-fi fuzzy garage rock singles band then to a heavier psych powerhouse singing full on in English. The centerpiece single being the title track, "Dark Sunrise", should get any heavy seventies I-rock head salivating. The second disc compiling Ililonga's first two solo records is a more varied affair as he goes through many seventies styles and tropes. There's still plenty of heavy psych with searing guitar leads, but there's also some Thin Lizzyish power rock, baroque rock balladry, heavy sexy blues and even some rhythmic Afro-pop.
The cds are housed in a 32 page full color hardback book compiling photos and interviews, liner notes and ephemera, and the triple lp vinyl version is even fancier, a massive boxset containing 12 page booklet, and individual, exact reproductions of Ililonga's original 3 albums (thus tracklist of the vinyl format is somewhat different than the way the cds are organized, as described above). Whooo yeah!
"Last year's Old Testament album by Antifrost founder Ilios terrified me with its sudden bursts of hideous, twisted noise cleaving through passages of near silence. As the first ten minutes of this new piece progressed in minimally hushed fashion, I found myself hiding behind the sofa, waiting with buttocks clenched for the inevitable onslaught. However, the 'electric wind' here is a soft spray of radio static that radiates around either side of the few events that occur over the album's 45 minutes, muted slow motion explosions that melt into rumbling downward glissandi reminiscent of Stockhausen's Hymen. The bulk of the listening time is taken up with the fallout from these foregrounded episodes, an unsettling, disorientating experience." -- Keith Moline / The Wire
This album number two from Ilitch (a.k.a. Thierry Muller), originally released in 1980 and finally reissued in its entirety with a bonus disc of unreleased/live material. '10 Suicides' is record of dark and claustrophobic, primitive and noisy, electronic
Expanded, remastered reissue of this French guitarist's first album, originally released in 1978. Thierry Muller (for he is Ilitch) makes use of "destructured" guitar, droning organ, harmonium, tapes, synth, etc. to create dark, electronic soundscapes comparable to countrymen Heldon or a scarier Fripp/Eno. Experimental, atmospheric stuff indeed. Primitive, eerie, abstract, sometimes violent. This double disc set includes the previously unreleased third and fourth sides of what was originally intended to be double LP, as well as quite a lot of other bonus material, all of it equally nightmarish and excellent. Trainspotters should note that Ilitch is one of the avant-garde obscurities that appeared on the notorious Nurse With Wound list found on NWW's first album, along with much other seminal krautrock/noise/experimental weirdness, more and more of which is thankfully being reissued every day...
Just recently on our New Arrivals list (in our Record of the Week review of the Vertigo Mixed compilation) we mentioned (again) how much we love prog. Combine that with how much we also love the music of UK songwriter and experimentalist Richard Youngs, and you can imagine how excited we are by this brand new Ilk offering. Canticle is the unexpected second album from Richard Youngs' long-dormant "prog" project Ilk, a band (of sorts -- it's just Youngs and collaborator Andrew Paine, though we don't remember if Paine was involved with the first Ilk cd from 1999) that celebrates both the idea of '70s British progressive rock epics (including the pretentiousness of narration and the like) and the related field of pastoral folk-psych. Which isn't too far from what Richard Youngs is often all about anyway. Anyone familiar with his two most recent solo albums, the AQ faves Airs Of The Ear and River Through Howling Sky, will find much that's familiar about Ilk's Canticle. There's gorgeous melodic material on here, Richard's honest English voice accompanied by gentle acoustic guitar for some stuff with a moving, quasi-religious tone... but the intentionally, overtly "prog" aspect is borne out by tracks like "A Guiding Principle", which consists of a scrambled jumble of guitar, drums, and electronics, something like the Dead C playing a free jazz version of Relayer by Yes on 45! These more active, electric "prog" and "rock" elements interact interestingly throughout the album with the folk/drone loveliness we've come to expect from Youngs, for a listen that satisfies both our love of "classic" prog in general and the not so easily catagorized work of fellow prog-lover Richard Youngs in the particular. Recommended!
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The first release on Richard Youngs' No Fans label since the early '90s is quite a surprise -- it's not experimental noise stuff like much of his work with frequent collaborator Simon Wickham-Smith, this is actually the debut album by Young's one-man progressive rock band Ilk. Yup, '70s style prog rock -- but not really. Young has constructed mock-suites of beautifully intricate rock structures that include classical guitar, flute and sleigh bells. (No mellotron though.) Actually, the "prog" aspect of this seems kinda conceptual. I mean, there IS a Roger Dean-eque painting of a floating island of monoliths (that spell I-L-K) on the cover, and there's some portentous introductory narration by someone (Youngs' dad?). But the music isn't full of weird time changes or bombastic instrumentals to show off his chops -- it's simply beautiful, focusing mainly on Youngs' haunting vocals, and/or (in song "Nocturnal Path Flow" for instance) the mesmerizing sheets of eerie, shimmering sounds from his keyboards. It's elemental in its majesty -- you can understand how the album was inspired by his travels on the coast of Scotland. If you've gotten into Young's much more recent and equally gorgeous (if mellower) collaboration with Kawabata Makoto on vhf, you should definitely check this out! Allan LOVES this album.
One of the bigger and better 'underground' metal mags in the US. This issue: cover boys Emperor, plus Iron Maiden, Neurosis, Gehenna, Meshuggah, Enslaved, and many others, including even Helix! Pages and pages of reviews too.
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The death of his older brother J Dilla, had a huge impact on Illa J. In fact it was what made him grab a mic and become a hip-hop artist. After J Dilla's sad passing, his little brother dropped out of college and began a mission to continue his brother's musical legacy. While J Dilla was all about production and beats, Illa J was attracted to the microphone and had his heart set on becoming an MC. Smartly he went right to the source and used some of his brother's unused early productions as the musical bed over which he raps and sings. At its best this is some melty smooth and satisfying hip-hop, but there are some serious misfires as well. While we still think Illa J has yet to totally find his voice there is still plenty of promise to be found here.
More fringe electronica from the UK. Seems to be quite a healthy electronic music scene over there. How come we only hear from Scanner and Spooky and Pita and Fennesz ad infinitum when there's so much more to draw from? Guess these guys (like AQ faves
Installment number two from this mysterious UK electronic outfit, who as we have stated before) is part of the underground electronic scene that no one seems to be taking notice of. EP2 takes up where EP1 left off, pulsing buzzing hiss over squealing instruments and distant melodies, pounding video game big beats over buzzes and bleeps and blips, creepy rumbly ambience, spacey drones and hypnotic pulses, and a super spare 10 minute final track of minimal blips and clicks, pulses and whirrs that are occasionally overtaken by insectoid buzz and gorgeous minor key synth washes.
Illusion Of Safety records have been slow coming in recent years, but IOS mastermind Dan Burke has been hinting at a whole slew of new material forthcoming. All of which should be very good news for all who have followed his work over the years. Since 1983, Burke has been producing an occasionally volatile, often sublime, and almost always exceptional body of work that prominently figures into the history of industrial culture and the ensuing explorations of noise, dronemuzik, and electro-acoustic collages from the mid-'80s onward. There had long been a sense of violence and transgression in the Illusion Of Safety catalogue, yet the overt displays of psychological horrors that appeared on such albums as Historical have gradually sublimated into the more inquisitive and arguably more compelling albums such as In Opposition To Our Acceleration and here on Bridges Intact.
A room recording of piano, feedback, guitar, and electronics opens the album, as Burke presents a collaborative piece with one of the long-time contributors to Illusion Of Safety, in Thymme Jones (who fronts the idiosyncratic art-rock combo Cheer Accident). At first the piano and the guitar spiral atonal clusters around the droning feedback tones, but after a transition through a series of clattering objects, the piano swarms into a dynamic blur of Terry Riley / Charlemagne Palestine inspired minimalism. Very impressive! Electricified buzzes and tremolo flutterings scatter around another set of bleary guitar drones whose tendrils of shimmered tone and vaporous ephemerality lead to a haunted, levitating quality to the piece, as if everything were hovering around the participants in a seance. This isn't a haunting on the demonic scale, but something more sublime and peculiar. Burke shifts more towards an intense stream of mechanoid pulses, electrical whirls, pierced tones, rarified static, and heavily amplified microsonic vibrations. Here, IOS has more of the research & development experimentation that you would get from the likes of Joe Colley or John Duncan. As Burke ducks and weaves through his tangles of crossed wires, tactile crunches, and short-circuited electronics, the breadth of his ability to produce such an extraordinary variety of electro-acoustic expressionism becomes very evident.
It should also be noted that the Russian label Waystyx has produced some elaborate packaging with two fold-out panels with numerous die-cuts that give the folio the appearance of an old steel truss bridge. Limited and numbered to 324 copies.
The vinyl of Fin De Siecle came out in 1995 through the Korm Plastics label, who only pressed up 250 copies as something for the band to take on tour in Europe. In many ways, this was a parallel album to the sublime drone constructions that Illusion Of Safety produced on the unheralded masterpiece Of & The, whose foggy netherworld of found sounds crossed with haunted ambience was prescient of the albums that Mirror, Kevin Drumm, and The Caretaker would produce many years later. Illusion Of Safety had been operational for about a decade when this record originally came out, first building very ominous post-industrial constructions laced with toxic noise and unsettling media samples; but by the early '90s, IOS became far more sophisticated through subtle uses of musique concrete and psychoacoustic strategies. Records like Probe and Cancer are indicative of this approach leading to the more introspective and contemplative albums of the mid '90s, including Fin De Siecle.
The liner notes from revolving door Illusion Of Safety member Kurt Griesch mentions being unhappy with the outcome of the LP, as much of the material needed to be edited and revised to fit on vinyl. In revisiting the material, Illusion Of Safety chose to leave what was found on the LP intact and bracket those tracks with two newer pieces (one about three minutes long, the other over twenty-five) serving as a re-imagined framework. The first cut builds a screeching collage of metal-upon-metal and compacted rumblings ramping quickly to a corroded crescendo that snaps to a loud amplification of a runout groove on a piece of vinyl. This brief interlude of acoustic noises stand in stark contrast to the rest of album, which glides weightlessly in and out of the dreamy glassine drone of pre-waking ambience, stretching out the cybernetic dreamtime heard only in brief sketches on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. As an ambient record, Fin De Siecle does have its moments of dislocation and upheaval with a growling snarl of impulsive thrumming at the end of "Part One" and some gritty field recordings of an industrial wasteland devoid of any human emerging in "Part Three." Even on their prettiest and most graceful album, Illusion Of Safety find a way to make their proceedings unsettling.
