Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker) cites Dilated Peoples, Goran Bregovic, Julio Iglesias, Stilluppsteypa, Dr. Dre, Montell Jordan, and Daniel Miller as the most 'blatant' samples found within this documentation of his mutated electronica live performances around
Wobbly's plunderphonics were born out of his work on Negativland's weekly "Over The Edge" radio show on KPFA; and have developed into a distinctive sound fitting roughly in the Negativland comedy / commentary style of media cut ups. His work never smacks of provocation, as he has been very keen on disfiguring his pop culture references to stand clearly within the parameters of "fair use." As can be inferred from a couple of those aforementioned references, Wobbly's recent work has been venturing into hip hop, but not as another whiteboy ironic appropriation. Rather, it's an exuberant decontextualization of all of hip hop's hyperboles: scratching becomes so excessively technical as to lose all recognition of the rhythm, diva vocals wail and wander through impossible notes for an eternity, breakbeats are decimated into ungroovy robotic anti-funk. Wobbly's closest comparison is in how Matmos performs surgery on house music, sewing everything back together with ample semantic and compositional counterpoints.
What is also amazing about Wobbly's live shows is that they involve no laptops, no sequencers, no midi. He edits in real time using just a mixer, a couple of cd players, and several cheap samplers. With an album coming soon on Tigerbeat 6, Wobbly's definitely one to watch!!!
Multiple Peady features four remixes from two of the tracks from Wobbly's Playlist EP, which recontextualized the intrinsically idiotic marketing babel of the corporate music world into a cut 'n' paste collage of clunky electronic jigs and deconstructed vocal samples. For this 12", the remixing artists -- Sutekh, People Like Us, Blevin Blectum, and Wobbly himself -- drew from the damaged electronic rhythms of the EP and stayed clear of the media plunderphonia. Sutekh provides the most structured remix with a dance-floor friendly number of his inimitable goof-ball techno. Blevin Blechtum's jiggly remix smashes the original into tiny maniacal fragments and spiralling time-stretched events. For his own remix, Wobbly turns the damaged hip-hop found on Wild Why with all of the quick tempo changes and erratic jump cuts. People Like Us takes us back to the open range of mutated Americana, much like her collaboration with Wobbly and Matmos on Wide Open Spaces. Limited to 440 and pressed on translucent green vinyl.
Disguising itself as a demonstrational disc from Broadcast Programming, a corporate music marketing and programming group developed to "help you stay on top of your market", the latest ep from Jon Leidecker presents itself as a conceptual piece
Aquarius favorite Wobbly's first release for Kid 606's Tigerbeat6 label and it's possibly his best yet! Taking source material solely from S.F. Bay Area radio broadcasts, Wild Why is the end result of over two years worth of work which began originally as a live set before being slowly and painstakenly honed and sharpened into a carefully rendered studio project. Those who were fortunate enough to catch Wobbly's instore here early this year got a sneak peak at some of the insane plunderphuckery already. Given the nature of the source material (Destiny's Child, Eminem, y'know the type), and the artist's intention that they remain completely recognizable it's logical to expect that this would be a party pleasing mix a la the Kid's "Action Packed Mentallist...", but such a conclusion would be wrong. Wild Why is like a condensed and expanded homage to John Oswald's seminal "Black" or "Brown". Wobbly twists and turns the cliched utterances of contemporary hip hop in upon themselves rendering even the most macho posturing utterly slapstick. And if that's not enough to show Wobbly's dedication to the art of plunderphonics, then one needs only to open up the accompanying booklet to reveal a transcript of the entire vocal contents of the CD. Take and excerpt of track #18 for instance: "come buy, yo play radishes part (bola bo) judgement day (uh huh) I, I, I, I, quit. hey yo, me. Now now, now, now, lust two two three, back, you know what I'm sayin', we about to give you need y'all, jack d with the key, bounce, die peeps..." etc. So you can even read along with the disc. We asked Jon how long it took him to transcribe all this, but he merely chuckled, sighed and changed the subject. Highly recommended!
Not gonna spend a lot of time on this one, not because this isn't a good record; rather it's just that by the time you've finished reading about this record, it might already be gone. We have limited stock on this collaborative album of plunderphonia from People Like Us, Matmos, and Wobbly, and it's apparently already gone out of print, without any plan for future repressings. All in all "Wide Open Spaces" sounds an awful lot like People Like Us' previous album "Fistful of Knuckles," a cavalcade of bawdy jokes culled from Western storybook records, but that isn't to say that neither Matmos nor Wobbly can be heard. On the contrary, there's plenty of Maymos' twisted rhythms and Wobbly's mutant samples splattered throughout the album. Recorded live at the San Francisco Art Institute on October 5, 2002.
MPEG Download: "Clawing Your Eyes Out Down To Your Throat" [/audio/wmpluclawingyour.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Clawing Your Eyes Out Down To Your Throat" [/audio/wmpluclawingyour.m3u]
Wolf Eyes really tend to divide folks right down the middle. Love 'em or can't stand 'em. And in typical Wolf Eyes fashion, they're going to do their very best to annoy the fuck out of everybody with their 'big break' Sub Pop debut. Quite possibly the harshest Wolf Eyes record, which is saying a lot, Burned Mind is a caustic mouthful of acid, spit right in your eyes (ears?). A head melting electronic throb, equal parts damaged malfunctioning synths, squealing feedback, ultra distorted howls, skittering skipping sort-of-rhythms. Wolf Eyes, more than almost any other band, definitely sound damaged and fucked and seriously messed up. But what keeps Burned Mind from being a boring old straight up noise record? Hard to say. But something definitely does. Some mysterious intangible something. Burned Mind is definitely harsh, bit in no way unlistenable. In fact it's strangely beautiful and subtly (VERY subtly) melodic. Equal parts Factrix, Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse but all warped and twisted into the uniquely fucked sonic world of Wolf Eyes.
The apocalypse has come to mean 'the end of the world' but its original Greek definition is that of 'revelation,' albeit a really fucking heavy revelation of how the world is going to end. The differences between the pop-cultural definition and the biblical definition are somewhat semantic, but it's apt to mention in regards to Chelsea Wolfe's second record which situates the title in the context of the Greek alphabet. It's pretty clear that the revelations that Chelsea Wolfe spills across her brilliant doom-folk album don't aspire to the allegories and mystical visions pronounced by David Tibet, rather she seems to be clamoring about the conditions leading up to the end of the world. With demonic possession, toxic wastelands, and haunted sexuality being so prevalent in her ghastly world view, it's no wonder she's bellowing that the end is near.
Wolfe's first record - The Grime And The Glow - was a home-recorded affair, whose tape murk added to the choking-on-smog atmosphere of the dour songs. The sparse arrangements aggressively strummed on acoustic guitar shot all of the attention back on Wolfe's beguiling voice which takes cues from PJ Harvey, but way darker and witchier. The songs did liken themselves to the early apocalyptic folk aesthetics of Sol Invictus and Current 93; and that's still the case for Apokalypsis, although she has fleshed out her sound with a full band, capable of delivering minimalist Goth ballads, swamp-rock menace, and harrowing bursts of distortion to match the mood of her songs. Wolfe twists the fairytail beginning of "Tracks (Tall Bodies)" into gritty depressive dirges, reflective of the goth sound of her native LA some two decades ago (e.g. Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, etc.). She also reprises two songs from The Grime And The Glow, including the infernal barnburner "Demons" and the antebellum blues number "Moses" which retains its minor-key mope and slavehouse misery. The stalking-in-the snow pace of "Pale On Pale" lurches at a pace even slower than that of True Widow, with Wolfe's mournful voice lifting above the churning, blackened guitars. There's a grit and a severity to Chelsea Wolfe that makes her a very compelling figure in contemporary music, almost like a musical reincarnation of The Process Church in neo-goth form. Very highly recommended.
Reissued once again! Here's what we said the first time around:
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great, highly recommended!
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great and marks another killer release in the growing catalogue of witchy releases by Pendu Sound, following an lp from Sasha Grey's Atelecine and a single from witch house maven Mater Suspiria Vision. Highly Recommended!
Man, I wish I didn't know how this was done... because it takes all of the mystery out of the sounds and also that it appears to be the same trick that Steven Stapleton employed on the Nurse With Wound album "Thunder Perfect Mind."
Uber-conceptualist Achim Wollscheid broadcast a collage on Radio X in Frankfurt, Germany, using their three Denon DN C680 cd players. These can be operated at the same time and are equipped with scan/search data-wheels that allows one to start or stop a cd at any given point. When moved while playing a cd, the wheels send the disc into a locked groove, which can be shifted by constantly turning the wheel (about 60 shifts will scan one second of playing time). Essentially the cd players had been used to generate rapid fire pulsing clicks, which Wollscheid intuitively collaged to form a glistening digital elegance in "Shifts." Cool.
Emotional Rescue returns with another obscure Woo reissue originally only released as a cassette in 1990. For some avid Woo fans, this one has been heralded as an all out favorite, and indeed it is a incredibly strong addition to their already reissued catalog which we can't seem to get enough of. Marked notably by a more ethereal atmosphere made with digital synthesizers along with the acoustic guitar and oboe that has trademarked their sound previously. The arrangements still acoustically rhythmic but with less of a restless rush, and there is a greater presence of vocals, but not overtly so. In fact the first vocal track "Make Me Tea" is one of our favorite tracks with a lilting female backup vocal and gentle lullaby delivery. Their Durutti Column meets Cluster meets Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe remains in tact, but with greater nuance on the details. That may be because of its new remastering, but this is really aurally quite deep and beautifully delicate, becoming at times more about the spaces between sounds than the sounds themselves.
Their is a vinyl version of which we have a couple of copies (just ask!) but will wait until we can get more before we highlight here. One thing to note however is that only 18 of the original 22 cassette tracks are on the vinyl version, and annoyingly "Make Me Tea" was left off the vinyl version and released as a separate 7" that we haven't been able to get. All the tracks are included on the cd however. Regardless, this is an amazing release, and a great place to start with this remarkable duo as any!
Ultra limited 12" single from these SF psychedelic space rockers, featuring three tracks, reworked, reimagined and remixed, by Spectrum from Spacemen 3, Kandodo (aka Simon from heavy psych rockers The Heads!) and strangest of all electronica artists Andrew Weatherall, and if past WS records are any indication, even though we got a whole mess of these, odds are they'll sell out in a flash, and it's very likely that we will NOT be able to get more. Just fair warning.
Andrew Weatherall does seem like an odd choice, but his version is pretty cool nonetheless, he strips it way down, leaving just the bass, and some reverby vocals to drift over a slo-mo house music shuffle, chopping up the vocals into a cool skittery melody, laced with some Synsonics styled eighties Miami Vice drumming, and space age synth pulses, the result is edgy and tense, and definitely ends up sounding like something all the folks into that current wave of retro-futuristic faux eighties Carpenter / Goblin style soundtrackery (a la Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, etc.) would most definitely dig.
Spectrum from the late great Spacemen 3, whose band pretty much set the template for the Shjips, offers up the heaviest remix of the bunch, beginning all woozy and washed out, lots of sweeping backwards effects, dense tangled guitars, building to a serious psychedelic space rock blowout that almost sounds like multiple copies of the original all playing simultaneously, all slightly off, with one spinning backwards, a little like what we would hope a Teenage Filmstars / Wooden Shjips remix might sound like, which means it RULES.
The whole of the B side is taken up by Kandodo's mix, which begins with the basic tracks recorded by the Shjips and then sent overseas to be transformed into a spacey slow motion drug rock dirge, a gorgeous stoned drag, lazy and laid back, spacious and spaced out, the guitars liquid and fluid, the sound swoonsome and super hypnotic, the sound is pretty much locked in, a sprawl of psychedelic hypnorock, laced with all manner of squiggly guitars, and murky blurred melody, the perfect, nodding off drifting off comedown space-drug-psych jam for sure!
LIMITED TO 2500 COPIES! Which does seem like a lot, but see above, you have been warned...
Haruomi Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra) produced this "virtual country" album, that name-checks John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Mississippi John Hurt, Hank Williams and others. Ambient banjo? Another really nice addition to the always-surprising Asphodel roster.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A few weeks back we listed an amazing French synth-pop rarity on the Dark Entries label called The Dream Machine by duo X Ray Pop, a compilation of early singles and demos that was equal parts Les Rita Mitsouko, Mo-dettes and Stereo Total. Now Finders Keepers follows that up with a reissue of the band's first full length, Pirate!, from 1985. Pirate! was originally released on cassette in a small edition of 100 copies, so it went down the rabbithole of obscurities pretty quickly. So it's awesome that it's getting reissued! We did notice that 5 of the tracks on both releases were the same, but then a glance at the subtitle on this release, The Dark Side Of The X, clued us into the fact that while the songs are the same, they are VERY different versions. The Dream Machine demos were more stripped down and gave a lighter touch to the French pop created by vocalist Zouka Dzaza and instrumentalist Doc Pilot. On Pirate! however, the songs have more overdriven synthesizers creating a much darker Suicide-ish feel heightened by the rapid-fire drum machines. Still catchy and cool, but closer to the cold wave of Deux and Gina X on this go round than the way they were to Pizzacato 5 and Stereolab was on the last one.
A few weeks back we listed an amazing French synth-pop rarity on the Dark Entries label called The Dream Machine by duo X Ray Pop, a compilation of early singles and demos that was equal parts Les Rita Mitsouko, Mo-dettes and Stereo Total. Now Finders Keepers follows that up with a reissue of the band's first full length, Pirate!, from 1985. Pirate! was originally released on cassette in a small edition of 100 copies, so it went down the rabbithole of obscurities pretty quickly. So it's awesome that it's getting reissued! We did notice that 5 of the tracks on both releases were the same, but then a glance at the subtitle on this release, The Dark Side Of The X, clued us into the fact that while the songs are the same, they are VERY different versions. The Dream Machine demos were more stripped down and gave a lighter touch to the French pop created by vocalist Zouka Dzaza and instrumentalist Doc Pilot. On Pirate! however, the songs have more overdriven synthesizers creating a much darker Suicide-ish feel heightened by the rapid-fire drum machines. Still catchy and cool, but closer to the cold wave of Deux and Gina X on this go round than the way they were to Pizzacato 5 and Stereolab was on the last one.
Obscure French synth-pop duo of Doc Pilot and Zouka Dzaza, aka X Ray Pop, are rescued from the lost cassette / 7" single graveyard of the mid-eighties and finally have their early recorded output see the light of day, via Dark Entries, and what a treat! Like Nini Raviolette or Deux, this is our favorite kind of French minimal wave, with seductively blase female vocals and eccentric upbeat songs. Made with a economic setup of synths and drum machines, the songs are nevertheless super catchy and hook-laden, like a stripped down Les Rita Mitsouko or as an early reviewer from the mini-zine included with this lp compares them to a French Mo-dettes. Very cool! The first side consists of their early 7" singles released between 1984 and 1986 and begins perhaps with our favorite track, opener "La Machine A Rever". The B side is the 1984 demos originally released on cassette. Here they even do a stripped down version of Serge Gainsbourg and Bridgette Bardot's "Contakt". While it may not trump the original, it still beats the Wooden Shjips version. But seriously, fans of the cooler French minimal wave or even Stereolab, Stereo Total, or Pizzicato 5 will dig this thoroughly!
Astralwerks is betting a considerable amount of money that the 'bootleg' phenomenon that raged during the summer of 2002 hasn't completely died out, as they have obviously invested a considerable amount of money for Richard X to license all of the samples that land on his debut album "Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1." The bootleg or 'mash-up' aesthetic was a seemingly simple one, as an artist would take the a capella track of some overplayed pop song and layer it on top of the instrumental track of an equally overplayed pop song. Done well, it's a wonderfully subversive play between appropriated texts. Done badly, it's clumsy ironic drivel. Given the overwhelming number of those bootlegs that were dreadful, this is an artform which demands much more panache than your average artschool ironist can muster. Hiding behind this enigmatic moniker as well as the semi-legit project the Sugarbabes, Richard X proved he was the best of the bootleggers, with his deadly perfect mash-up of "Being Boiled" by Human League and "No Scrubs" by TLC which gave the appearance that absolutely nothing was done to either track in order for the two melodies to come together.
With the crackdown from the RIAA on those evil pirates who download illegal music from the net (insert sarcastic facial gesture and eyerolling here), there is absolutely no way Richard X could get away with the schtick that got him his credibility. As a result "Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1" is something of a compromise record; however, it is a deranged pop masterpiece that is simultaneously a piss-take, a send-up, and a perfect homage to terminal fashion victims, electroclash trainspotters, and ravenous consumers of the mainstream entertainment industry. The album opens with a reprise of the "Being Boiled" mash-up; however, this time Richard commissioned the R&B group Liberty X for a rendition of the Chaka Khan classic "Ain't Nobody," and highlights include a very clever version of Burt Bacharach's "Walk On By" with Flying Lizards' vocalist Deborah Evans-Strickland offering the same deadpan vocal delivery she gave to the Lizards' new wave classic cover of "Money." Some of the references are a bit more obscure, delving into diva house territory with a pretty straight remake of Thelma Houston's "You Used To Hold Me So Tight." The one major dud on the album is the cornball crap track from electroclash dork Tiga, who breathily recites 'you better let me love you' at best sounding like a overly cologned playboy with only one sleazy pick up line, at worst like a date rapist. Overlook this one track, and you'll find that Richard X has done very well with the limitations set before him. It's certainly not the free world you might think it is.
Our first exposure to Xela, the musical outfit of Type label head honcho John Twells, was the most recent full length disc The Dead Sea, which took the sound of, well, The Dead C, and got it all tangled up with the blissy fuzz of the Gooom label, and the warm shimmer of Pop Ambient, all coalescing into some perfectly abstract dreamy off kilter pop flecked free noise. Buried amidst all of the other elements was some electronica skitter, but it was a tiny part of the bigger sound.
But as we've dug deeper into his past efforts, we've discovered, that Xela began as much more of an electronica / IDM sort of project. The recently reviewed reissue For Frosty Mornings And Summer Nights was heavy on the beats, carving out a sonic niche somewhere between his later more abstract sound and the warm sun dappled electronic shuffle of Boards Of Canada. And this two song 7" definitely falls within the same sonic parameters. One side is all record crackle over murky thumps, bits of strange industrial clatter, and deep almost house music like swells, but with a HUGE low end that rumbles your ribcage and wraps its thick tendrils around everything. There are some stuttery rhythms, some chopped vocals, bits of looped melody all swirled into the mix, the result sounding like a way more abstract Boards Of Canada. Which is definitely a good thing.
The flipside is even more reminiscent of the Boards, with muted melodies, epic string swells, and all sorts of skittery shuffling Autechre-y rhythms. All amidst layer after layer of warm thick sound, dense and blissed out. Melodic and dramatic and melancholy, dreamy and so so nice.
SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in a plain white sleeve.
We loved the most recent Xela disc so much, last year's The Dead Sea, that we figured we oughta check out the one that came right before, For Frosty Mornings And Summer Nights, an older Xela disc, that just so happened to have just now been reissued with bonus tracks.
Xela, the musical outfit of Type label head honcho John Twells, laps up all the glitchy fuzzy pop goodness that we can't seem to tire of and turns it into something all his own. Labels like Gooom and Lampse, groups like Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Gultskra Artikler, are all redefining pop music, taking classically catchy songs, and using all manner of digital and organic manipulations to obscure them, to cloak them in distortion, to wreathe them in buzz and fuzz, to make the hook, the pop, less of the focal point and more of a hidden gem, the oft chewy center, something less obvious and hitting you over the head, a pop music that requires close listening, songs like dirty windows on old houses, they need to be peered into before the shapes and sights beneath the grime and murk reveal themselves.
For Frosty Mornings And Summer Nights finds Xela at an early stage, where the sound was based on beats as much as texture. A dreamy blissed out laid back electronica. Autchre-ish skitter woven into warm swells of sound, thick swaths of muted melody chopped up into shuffling hiccupping IDM shapes. Boards Of Canada are definitely a reference point. But Xela seems to have a bit of a hip hop vibe, as subtle as it is, the beats definitely sound influenced by hip hop, and the songs are laced with little vocal ticks, the ubiquitous "uh huh"s and "yeah"s, a la Timbaland, looped into the mix.
There is still plenty of glistening shimmer, lots of thick whirring drones, clouds of crackle and whir, soft expanses of blissed out ambience, but this disc is definitely about beats, even when they are muted and buried in the mix.
Fans of Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Chris Clark, B. Fleischmann will seriously dig this stuff. And all you Pop Ambient headz, and fuzzy pop kids, and buzzy, droney dream rockers, you might dig this too, as long as you're not averse to some serious beats. And if for some strange reason you are, check out Xela's The Dead Sea instead...
Album number three for the Brooklyn retro-garde duo Xeno & Oaklander (aka Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride), who are the flagship outfit for Wierd Records in their recapitulation of a particular strain of cold synthwave circa 1981. Wendelbo and McBride have collected a mighty impressive collection of synths, sequencers, and drum machines of that era, and they've stuck to their 'no computers' ethos in creating their retro sound. Given the limitations in instrumentation and aesthetics, the Xeno & Oaklander albums do trend toward similarity, veering towards a brighter, new wave / Italo-disco vibe here on Sets & Lights and slightly away from the industrial-tinged notions found on their 2009 breakout album Sentinelle. Wendelbo and McBride alternate on vocals, with Wendelbo taking up her breathy waif-like elegance and McBride adopting British affectations in his delivery. The title track and "Years Before" glide upon percolating, almost Moroder-esque sequencing with disco-inspired basslines and suitably propulsive rhythm tracks bracing everything inside the synth-pop shell that Xeno & Oaklander have so carefully refined. The icy sensuality of the instrumental track "Italy" slows the pace down to something more akin to Johnny Jewel's heartbeat instead of their typically urgent tempos; and it actually suits Xeno & Oaklander quite well, allowing all of the synth blorp to glow just a little bit more. A fine record, even as it doesn't quite venture into new territories.
Xeno & Oaklander were born in the wrong decade and on the wrong continent, but that hasn't stopped them from constructing brilliantly haunted minimal-wave tracks which lead directly back to Belgium (or France, or Germany, or England, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter) circa 1982 through all sorts of analog synths, drum machines, and sequencers. Vinyl of course is the right medium for a band that seeks the vintage pleasures of forgotten futures; but Vigils was originally just a cd-r self-released back in 2006. It quickly became a staple at the Wierd Records parties in New York, and some of the tracks here had appeared in slightly different forms on the two Wierd Records compilations from about that same time. Since then, Xeno & Oaklander have seen their stock rise thanks to a number of retrogarde forces at work, including the reissue campaigns from Minimal Wave and Dark Entries, as well as the huge success of fellow dark-synth technicians Cold Cave. While their 2009 album Sentinelle was received with considerable critical acclaim, Vigils is a much better album altogether. Arpeggiating synth lines and skeletal drum machines form the basic structures of all of the Xeno & Oaklander songs, whose uptempo rhythms belie the aching melancholy formed out of the intertwining melodies and detached vocals from both Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride. In all of these echo-plexed pulse-tone synths, stark atmospheres, and romantic pop detachment, Xeno & Oaklander unabashedly channel the spirits of Chris & Cosey, Ruth, and Depeche Mode, with the European desire furthered by lyrics in French and German as well as English.
Xex was the experimental synthpop creation of three high-school misfits living in central New Jersey during the mid-'70s, having survived their teen years of suburban boredom with plenty of drugs and eye-opening excursions to New York. Liberated by the spirit of punk, this outfit - pseudonymously known as Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo, and Alex Zander (later joined by Jon-Boy Diode and David Anderson) - took up the task of infusing a smarty-pants cynicism to hyper-primitive arrangements on a small assortment of synths and drum machines. No guitars whatsoever, the sound of Xex is one of skewed melodicism and incessant repetition. This combined with a typically monotone vocal sensibility put Xex in the same synthpunk orbit as The Units and Crash Course In Science. It's a very American sound, to look back upon all of these records. In Europe, the new wave and synthpop was far more self-possessed, even amongst the DIY circles, but for a certain subset in the States, the nerds had become emboldened in punk to use science and math as a spasmodic, future-shock means for nihilist poetics and cathartic release - hence, Devo, Dark Day, Nervous Gender, the aforementioned Crash Course In Science, and Xex. With the exception of Primitive Calculators and Severed Heads in Australia, there's hardly a parallel anywhere else in the world to this synthpunk sound; and Xex were certainly exceptional at it.
Group Xex was the only record they released, although the band recorded a second album but never released it (unfortunately the tapes of that second album had deteriorated beyond repair). Self-released in 1980, the album was sold pretty much exclusively in Manhattan and North Jersey, with an edition of a 1000 copies disappearing quickly. The album did get a cd reish in 1995 after Tom Smith championed the record after discovering it in the vaults at WFMU. It's a very quizzical album of purposefully simple electronic tunes played upon whipcrack drum machines and minimally percolating synths matched by the alternatinge female and male vocals, which are always thin, reedy, and metallic. Thumbalina's girly vocals bounce through the motorik synthpop ditty "Fashion Hurts" whose singsonginess is immediately countered by the unwavering robotic monotone that Pierogi presents on the cybernetic "You Think", and the grim, paranoiac poetry on "SNGA" (which stands for Soviet Nerve Gas Attack).
Another great find from the always impressive Dark Entries label! Definitely for fans of Devo and the Units. Limited to 500 copies with a great looking new wave booklet with lyrics, a band history, and some amusing tidbits thrown in for good measure.
Gosh, somebody must have convinced wall-of-sound Japanese "noise-pop" duo Xinlisupreme that their last album "Tomorrow Never Comes" wasn't noisy enough. 'Cause though we'd not have thought it possible, it seems they've upped the mayhem quotient here, on this 7-track followup! Heavily distorted, uh, distortion, with pretty little melodies and beats buried beneath. An extreme electronic blend of My Bloody Valentine, Digital Hardcore, DJ Scud, Merzbow, and stuff like by these feedback-lovin' popsters. We think this is quite nice, though for some that word might seem strange in context of Xinlisupreme's up-front loudness and chaos. Recommended.
Japanese duo Xinlisupreme have been touted by their label Fat Cat as a mix of My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, and Merzbow! Fat Cat has done well to preload our expectations with three advanced references to avant-rock history, but it has to be
Minimalist techno maven Robert Hood on the cover. Also: Actress, Oval, Mount Kimbie, Diskjokke, De Tropix, and more. Including lots of ads for electronic music making gear and software (the full-page one for Roland's AX-Synth being our fave).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The first release from this new drum & bass label which calls Oakland home is from XXX. Dramatic hovering basslines and haunting piano riffs set a dark almost film noir quality to the breaks. While it's meant to be played at 45, the a-side sounds huge at 33! Also comes packaged with a diode mounted in the plain white sleeve. A very nice single.
Boredoms fans!! Bandleader Eye Yamataka, when not conducting the Boredoms themselves through thunderous drum-circle tranceouts, has a sideline in doing remixes for other artists, incorporating the same mega dosage of percussive craziness, throbbing rhythm, and swerve-y turntablist glitch that you'd find spilling forth from the most way-out Boredoms tracks. If you picked up Lindstrom's Contemporary Fix remix ep that we listed a couple weeks back you've heard a good example of Eye's handiwork. This Japan-only import disc brings together a dozen other of his best recent remix projects, the raw material coming from bands both known and unknown (to us). All of 'em -- except for Gong -- being Japanese bands we're pretty sure. Along with Gong, some of the names we do know: OOIOO, Wrench, DJ Pica Pica Pica (who IS Eye, right?), and Ken Ishii's Flare. And the names we don't: Walrus, Zeebra, Atami, Black Drop The Bomb, NXS, Boat, and one more we can't figure out (it's written in Japanese). Given the headspinning EYE extreme remix treatment, these artists' disparate tracks sound like they belong together on one disc for sure, he's put his surreal stamp on each of 'em big time. It's a colorful, energetic melange of tribal drumming, barnyard noises, faux ethnic exotica, techno beats, tape manipulations, guitar riffs, and heaps of psychedelic electronic effects.
Japanese experimentalist (who was involved with Fluxus way back when) shows how he can make a skipping cd into a thing of beauty, albeit a noisy one. A lot more jarring than Oval...
A Morr Music supergroup? Yes, It was bound to happen sooner or later, what with such a solid and ever expanding roster of likeminded artists on board. Year Of's members include B. Fleischmann, Martin Siewert, Werner Dafeldecker, Paul Kling, and Christof Kurzmann. As can be expected the Morr Music trademark drowsy delicate electronica forms the core of this group's sound, but there's more dimensions to it than that. Unexpected inflections of jazz and country/folk color and shade the affair with warmer brassy hues than the usual frosty blues and strawberry ice cream pinks of the individual artists' works. Definitely stands apart fom the rest of the Morr pack. The year of what? Whatever it is, it's good!
Brand new disc of solo works from these two one man bands, both of whom traffic in sounds much harsher and heavier in their 'day jobs'. Ventoux is Graham from aQ faves Souvenir's Young America and Forensics, and Years is Ryan from Darkest Hour and City Of Caterpillar, both of whom seem to share a similar sonic focus here, away from the heaviness of their proper bands, both delve deeply into some sonic netherworld where the churning blackened buzz of Locrian intersects with the psychedelic bliss out of Expo 70, and the barren dusky deserty twang of Barn Owl blurs into the cavernous creep of Lustmord.
Years is up first, and deftly unfurls a shimmery electronic buzz that drifts atop billowy clouds of rib cage rattling low end, the insectoid melodies the perfect foil for the suffocating black hole bass beneath, the two delicately intertwined, creating something at once dense and black, ethereal and amorphous. The high end peels away, leaving just that deep Niblockian thrum, before being buried beneath a cascade of almost symphonic sounding high end, a woozy washed out synth heavy swirl that fades out again, leaving just that massive almost physical sounding low end, before finishing off with a haunting minor key bit of cinematic synthscapery, that's both dark and dramatic, and definitely hints at the sound of Umberto and Zombi and all the rest, but still tethered to that intense black hole bass.
Ventoux is immediately a much darker proposition, launching immediately into a churning, Locrian like black ambience, thick and undulating, softly gristly, laced with shards of melody, and wreathed in ever shifting textures, and like Years, allowing all sort of warm whirl and dreamlike shimmer to creep into the proceedings, so that by the end of the opening tracks nearly ten minutes, the sound has lightened considerably, and has drifted into a sort of sun dappled Nadja style metalgaze drift, a lush blur of softly roiling riffage. The second track grows considerably darker, playing out like some ancient sonic ritual, the sounds massive and glacial, this track too, gradually begins to build, but here instead of blissing out, the noise is cranked up, and not just Merzbow style noise, no instead it's a weird grinding choral sort of swirl, a blackened choir, twisted and tangled into a gloriously chaotic psychedelic ur-drone, which leads directly into the final 'movement', perhaps the noisiest and heaviest of the bunch. A groaning, creaking, caustic landscape of crumbling low end, thick processed burts of strangely melodic noise and dubbed out industrial clang and clatter, all wreathed in a black sonic gauze, but also infused with a strange bit of buried melody, that keeps the sound weirdly warm, and strangely soothing, the sort of sinister blackdrone music that transforms punishing blacknoise into mesmerizing tranced out black ambience.
Matt Yee-King, one of the stars of Bristol UK's 'Trash' electronica collective, here presents a solo disc which appropriately enough is released on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Yes, it sounds a lot like Aphex: skittering drum n' bass derived beat programming meeting with both pleasant melodies and distorted noises. Quite nice.
Oh-la-la - this young French lady makes some of the most exciting and satisfying dance music around. With her second album she's proven she is no fluke, or one hit wonder, as this is just as action packed, fun filled, and free flowing as her great debut. It's really hard to make a solid dance record that doesn't just rely on a few hits and then the rest is just forgettable filler, Yelle has no room for filler in her life, as every single song on here brings the goods with such exciting results. This makes us think of what it might sound like if some really cool French electro-producers produced a record by Kylie Minogue or Goldfrapp. But it's really Yelle's energy and charisma that makes her stand way ahead of the electro-dance-pop pack, as you always feel such a human and real element driving these contagious songs. This has summer jams of '11 written all over it!
The second Yo La Tengo remix ep. True to the excellence we've come to expect from him, Japanese knobtwiddler Nobukazu Takemura delivers the best track (just as he did for the Steve Reich remix album) on this little slip of an EP, wherein Kit Clayton, Q-Unique, and Takemura remix versions of one song by Yo La Tengo, a quiet, murmur-y instrumental. This will appeal to fans of the mellow, sweet Yo La, if you want feedback and such, look elsewhere.
Proven himself to be a deft musical chameleon, Susumu Yokota has drawn much praise and respect from critics and fellow musicians. Grinning Cat is no exception.
Susumu Yokota has been active in the electronic music scene for the last twenty years. While his early days were spent mostly on house and other facets of dance music, recent years have found him exploring more ambient and textured sides of electronic production with a sound that often sounds similar to a Philip Glass or Steve Reich composition. In fact we were playing this in the store right after listening to the new Steve Reich and a customer who was here while we were playing it didn't realize we were now listening to Yokota and during "Flaming Love and Destiny" one of the best tracks on the album remarked "Wow, this new Steve Reich is great!" Yokota loves to intertwine the worlds of classical and modern electronica. While sometimes he can be guilty of pouring it all on a little thick and syrupy (as does Mr. Glass to whom he's often aligned) as happens on the first and last tracks, luckily for the most part he finds a nice balance of subtly and emotion that makes for a really nice listen.
