Borg is a suitably anonymous project based out of New York, fusing occasionally blackened ambience with analog driven electronica. The first excursions that Borg released on Phaserprone crept through the Chain Reaction murk of heroin house as filtered through Wolf Eyes. On that debut, it was easy to take the Star Trek Next Generation reference to the Borg, a cybernetic absorption of everything into a dark pulsing mass; but for their / his / hers / its second release on Phaserprone, Borg take up a sound similar to our recent dark-electro crush Cold Cave. Here on I:A, Borg shifts things away from a drug addled techno and toward a skeletal electronic funk. There is something of a retrogarde reinterpretation of the Sheffield sound of Cabaret Voltaire and Hula crunched through Aaron Dilloway's suitcases of crusty gear while casting a longing gaze to the Ed Banger crowd of electro breaks and squiggliness. Sublimated melodies tumble in analogue glory across midtempo breakbeats that put a strangle hold on accompanying tribal rhythms and bass riffs. Haunted vibes from funhouse organ grinds underpin a couple of the tracks that otherwise might percolate alongside those Museum of Future Sound Skwee compilations.
Released on the Baltimore based label Phaserprone, known for the heavily embossed letterpressed artwork complimenting the hand-crafted brutality through noise and rhythm. Borg's I:A sticks out from the rest of the Phaserprone catalogue, as this album is certainly not brutal or purposefully ugly, even if it is monochrome in grey. Phaserprone sneers that "you will hate this." We think to the contrary. There's probably plenty of people who will love these beats 'n' synths, and maybe get sucked into the netherworld that is Phaserprone. Recommended? Oh, yes; and it's limited to a whopping 200 copies.
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Here, Dark Entries reissues the terminally obscure second album from the Slovenian minimal-wave quartet Borghesia. The band formed in 1982 during the death throes of the fractious Yugoslavian republic, operating in a liminal space between the art world and the underground punk scene, through their own club Disco FV. During these early years, the quartet produced video installations and performances alike, with the sound design being an instrumental, hard-edged variant on new wave sensibilities. By the mid '80s, the project stripped down to a duo and took up a sweaty DAF-inspired muscularity of industrial funk. But here on Clones (originally self-released as a cassette in 1984), we find Borghesia doing their best work. All instrumental trax of hypnotic, pulsing electronics with some very forward thinking 808 drum programming that foreshadowed the reductionist strategies of Detroit electro and techno, albeit within a context that favored the darker sounds of The Human League and Soft Cell. The A side features spry and punchy tracks with plenty of elliptical arpeggiations and ramped up BPMs, whereas the B side is more pastoral and slower, sporting an eerie, melodic homage to Cindy Sherman. Clones, indeed!
In conjunction with the new album Smile, Boris offer up this super limited remix 12", already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we only got 40 copies, so once these are gone, probably by the time you've gotten this far into the review, that's IT.
So two songs, both remixed versions of songs from other releases. One a super effected revamped version of "Message" the opening track from the Japanese version of Smile, which itself is a remixed version of "Statement" from the Southern Lord 7" and the US version of Smile. Confused yet? Welcome to Boris country.
So the remixed "Message" takes the original, and drenches it in FX, strips much of the guitar away, leaving just that relentless tribal rhythm, and then wrapped all around it, various little sonic flourishes, drones, and shimmers, little melodic tangles, long drawn out high end streaks, whirs and little stuttery strums, and the original's "woo hoo" vocals. Super minimal and trancey and blissed out. A bit like Boris filtered though later Boredoms.
But the real attraction is the remix of "Floor Shaker", the original was exclusive to the now out of print Southern Lord 7", but here the song is totally pulled apart and twisted into new shapes. At first, the vibe sounds really retro, skittery high hats, the vocals all by their lonesome, then some disco-y beats and some super fuzzy synths. Very new wave sounding. On the verge of being cheesy, but paired up with the plaintive almost emo vocals, the result is actually pretty cool.
But as the track progresses, it gets weirder and weirder, the synths more skeletal and damaged sounding, the beat a simple throbbing pulse, the whole thing doused in weird feedback and electronic squelches, high end chirps, and a cool looped vocal snippet, the vibe much more M83, a sort of washed out sun dappled overdriven shoegaze-y electro bliss out, shades of Health, Crystal Castles, Justice, and that whole new wave of modern synthsoaked dirty disco electropop, all wrapped around little bits of fuzzy blown out Boris.
Again, already out of print, limited to 1000 copies worldwide, we got 40. That's it. Packaged in plain yellow 12" sleeves, sealed shut with a sticker.
One of the tracks from Boris's recent J-Pop infused opus New Album gets the 12" remix treatment, making for a Boris release that's even further removed from their Melvins-y heavy rock roots.
The A side features ALTZ's "Fall In Love Mix", the B side's got Hatchback's "Pacific Wind Mix". Hatchback we're less familiar with, but ALTZ is interesting, we know 'em from their Boredoms remix on Super Roots 10 - and also the isophonic boogie woogie of the Altz Meets Roland P. Young album that EM put out a while back.
We just have a handful of these imports, and they come in black sleeves, nothin' fancy. For super big Boris fans and DJs only, we assume.
A few lists back, we reviewed a cd from this German 'techno-kraut' duo, who as we mentioned in that review, we first heard remixing Conrad Schnitzler. That disc gathered togther two of B&G's recent 12"s, and was a perfect introduction to their strange string laden, motorik electronica, hypnotic and tranced out electro-kraut minimalism, that deftly fused techno, and dark hypno-jazz, pop ambience, and all sorts of disparate elements.
Clouds is something else altogether, but equally appealing. No beats to be found here, the vibe is about as far removed from krautrock as can be, or dark jazz, or any of the other sonic elements that made up those 12"s. Instead, Clouds finds the duo creating super abstract modern twenty first century classical minimalism, and experimental ambience. The opener reminds us of WIlliam Basinski, or maybe Philip Jeck, a gorgeous fragment of swoonsome melancholic symphonic strings, is manipulated into a hazy dreamscape of washed out loops, of blurred melodies, simple and cyclical, repetitive and gloriously hypnotic, the sound doesn't really change at all until about 5 minutes in, when haunting operatic female vocals join the strings, making it sound all the more dramatic and cinematic. And it's only briefly, soon, the voices fade, blurred into the background, and it's another gorgeous stretch of swirling strings.
The second track is similarly arranged, but much more percussive, a plucked guitar, a symphonic stab, those two elements spread out over an expanse of near silence, super dynamic, heavily reverbed, it's a strange, and strangely rhythmic composition, this track especially smacking of some super abstract Jeck experiment, two turntables set up in a huge empty room, one spinning a single orchestral burst, the other that guitar pluck, the speed constantly shifting, very weird, and very mesmerizing stuff.
"Secret Bells" is not bells at all, but instead, dark languorous piano, drifting in a sea of rumble and buzz, flecked with what sounds like mysterious field recordings, static and crackle, it's very hazy and dreamlike, a warm swirl of otherworldly chamber music.
The record finishes off with the three part, 14+ minute title suite, and begins as stately piano, wreathed in natural reverb, soon joined by woodwinds, the sound growing blurrier, and more dissonant, building to a strangely atonal crescendo, before easing back into the more tranquil drift of the opening, and so it goes back and forth, lush and hushed and delicate, dark and brooding and almost bombastic, before blossoming into the second movement, which is more driving and discordant, horns, piano, buzzing strings, locked into stuttering rhythms, darkly dramatic, and very cinematic, again very dynamic, and very hypnotic, before finally finishing off with a stretch of long tones, a more mournful dirge, the horns moaning, the strings keening, the vibe almost like some ancient court music, majestic and melancholy, finishing off with a final flurry of tangled melodies.
Quite cool, and yet so entirely unlike anything we were expecting from these two, which might be why we're digging it so much!
FYI there's an lp version too, with download code, but we only were able to get a few, not really enough to list, but you can ask...
Maybe we've been going through a bit of a techno phase here at aQ lately, freaking out about the likes of Shed and Silent Servant, among others. For some of us here, it's waaaay more than a phase... And you know we love the krautrock. So Christian Borngraber & Jens Struver are just what the doctor ordered. The Berlin based duo (whom we first encountered remixing the late great Conrad Schnitzler) offer up what could arguably be considered "techno krautrock" on this disc, which collects together two of their vinyl 12" releases (still available separately, we got 'em), Urlaub and In G, originally from 2011 and 2010, respectively.
The three tracks of Urlaub are all quite compelling, rhythmically and otherwise, full of hushed pulsations and eerie echoing electronic hypnosis. There's the tremulous atmospheres of 16 and half minute opener "Reise". The icy dancefloor noir of "Berlin Tribal Music". And then the nearly 12 minute "Dancing Queen", which has a breathy, flute-like lick looping throughout as part of its happy chugging shuffle that we can't help but associate with early, traffic cone era Kraftwerk (gone disco). All of Urlaub is groovy, minimalist, motorik stuff we're really digging.
Maybe even better, and even more krautrockish, is the second half of this disc, In G parts I and II, totaling almost 32 minutes, a slow-building beatscape with whispery, wind-like textures and choppy samples of sweetly sawing strings. It's both haunting and groovy, quite a krauty techno tour de force that incorporates clicks n' cuts, drones, and pop ambient 20th century classical sounds. Wow. We note that it bears a dedication to revolutionary free jazz bassist Sirone.
In particular, if you liked a couple of other releases we've reviewed recently - Oren Ambarchi's Sagittarian Domain, and/or Elektro Guzzi's Live P.A. - this might be right up your alley. Recommended, of course!
Bottleskup is another twig off of the Godspeed You Black Emperor tree. Actually its the alias of One Speed Bike which is the alias of Aidan Girt. He's also the figure behind Exhaust not to mention being the drummer for GYBE. Whew! As with 1SB, he reveals the rougher, unpolished improv side of the Montreal music scene. Often hit or miss, and often a bit crude in its execution, Girt's work is more about capturing the gritty moments. Loops and samples are thrust through a cloud of belching distortion and processing. Murky, repetitive, and verging on industrial. The first song features a simple dorky keyboard melody awkwardly tapped out with one finger. The final track burbles with the decaying theme song from Entertainment Tonight. Vocals are few and far between but when they do surface, they're muffled spoken or hollered proclamations. All the while foggy four on the floor dance beats churn away like lo-fi house tracks. Ten tracks in all, each with very long song titles like "If anyone in this high school fucks with you for being a freak, just tell me and I'll kick their ass" and "The day I defeated the Dutch shelf toilet".
This French band is seemingly named after an '80s video game, and aptly so, 'cause that's what a lot of this sounds like. Bleepage from dusty, vintage videogame consoles, but put to use in pretty lil' micro-songs with wistful singing. Simultaneously cute and sad. The title is also apt: alien (that's the video game sounds), folk (that's the melodic element) and trash (that's the distortion), sure. Imagine, say, the melancholic folky music of AQ-fave Greg Weeks colliding with some post-DHR distorted DIY electronics. Very pretty and fucked up. One track will feature acoustic guitar strum, the next quirky Aphex Twin-ish breakbeats. Some, both. It's very personal, homemade sounding stuff, which makes sense 'cause while we called this a band up top, actually Boulder dDash is really pretty much just one guy, a French fellow named Jean-Baptiste Hanak, with additional vocals on four of the twenty tracks by someone named The Very Ape (possibly Hanak's girlfriend?) who is even more sad sounding than he is. But as sad as the singing can be, this is a fun album. There's a song about comic book hero Fillerbunny, and another is dedicated to labelmates Electronicat. Oh, and this disc includes an entire bonus album of mp3s called "The Dark Side Of Boulder dDash" that's rather more crazed and stupid, like Hanak got really drunk and tried to make some hip-hop tracks. Weird.
MPEG Download: "On The Road Again" [/audio/boulderontheroad.mp3]
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MPEG Download: "Ur.So (feat. the Very Ape)" [/audio/boulderurso.mp3]
Bovine Life presents a weird album of abstract electronica, sounding like the mid-90s clunky techno of As One or David Moufang with plenty of mechanical sequencing sort of like Tackhead, but with the purposefully angularity of Laurie Anderson to guarantee qualifications of this as "conceptual." Bovine Life offers some collaborations with Smyglyssna (Plug Research), renowned turntable
The two previous albums by Bowery Electric were amazing extensions of My Bloody Valentine's blurry glide guitar sound fused with an interest in bleak electronica hypnosis. Yet "Lushlife" marks a huge and somewhat baffling leap in direction for Bowery Electric into the more commercially viable trip hop realm, with minor chord strings, smoky Portishead atmospheres, and downtempo breaks. I don't suppose the desire for dollars had something to do with this transformation?
We're really not sure how we managed to miss this one. Especially with us always dying for more grime. More blissed out dark and doomy dubstep. Well, this is IT!!! This 'it' actually came out almost a year ago! But so what! We just discovered it, and maybe you missed it as well. Boxcutter is everything we've been hankering for. And digging elsewhere. Milanese (a past AQ record of the week), Kode9, Virus Syndicate, that Mary Anne Hobbs comp, the Science Faction: Grime comp, Boxcutter fits right in amongst those killers. And is totally kicking our ass. Maybe more dubstep than grime (although it sounds pretty grimey to us, and we're not even really sure of the difference), this is dense and skittery, blown out dub drenched grimey and and filthy dark-as-fuck electronica. The rhythms throb and shuffle, a hiccuping stutter, that is not so much funky as fucked up and hypnotic, occasional beats get all gnarled up, glitching and buzzing before falling back into line. All around the beats, thick clouds of strange synths and spaced out FX hover and swirl, peppered with melodic fragments, and thick rib cage rattling bass lines.
Some of the tracks are WAY laid back, dubbed out to the extreme, a sort of late night / early morning chill out sound. All dark and druggy, heavy lidded and sort of shuffling drowsily. But other tracks are HUGE and bumping. Bursts of blown out synth fuzz, massive rolling bass lines, streaks of sizzling sound that careen from speaker to speaker, bits of fluttering flute suspended over dense rhythmic tangles, huge smears of undulating low end, kick drums that punch right through your sternum, sounding almost like some killer dancefloor destroying jungle dubplate played at 16 rpm.
Heavy and thick and dark and fuzzed out and spacey and groovy and so fucking great!!
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Alright, let's get the obvious outta the way... the boy (aka Alexander Chen) certainly is in static. Really! Ha ha ha! Ahem. Strummy acoustic guitar with whispery male vocals (sorta like a drowsy Billy Corrigan), all a-wash with soft organ tones and shimmery Oval-esque electronics. Very wistful, pretty and frequently quite reminiscent of LaliPuna or Ms John Soda (perhaps not so coincidentally this album was released on Alien Transistor, the new label run by The Notwist), but the sad thing is this sound has become so associated with bank, car and prescription drug commercials it's getting increasingly difficult to push the visions of floating pills, VW Bugs and men in suits from your mind. But don't let that keep you from picking this up because it's pretty darn good!
Imagine yourself awakening at a seaside villa. You've nothing to do except take a leisurely stroll down to the water's edge, the tide lapping gently at your feet. In such a sigh inducing setting, your mind's allowed to wander, to dream. Stress and clutter begone! Well geez, that sounds mighty good, doesn't it? But alas, most of us can't afford a week on the coast of Spain or Italy right now, so we'll have to settle for the shoegazerly electronic pop stylings of Violet conjure such blissful aquatic scenes. Softly sanded electronic washes, warm blanketing organ drones, smoother stringed instruments and the murmured vocals of this Boy (aka Alexander Chen) keep the tones hushed and the mood ultra mellow.
For fans of Broken Social Scene, The Notwist, and Caribou. So nice.
San Francisco boasts a great history of kick ass party bands who have the ability to get a warehouse full of sweaty folks lost in pulsating sounds. From Tussle, Numbers, Dynasty Handbag, The Vanishing, Harold Ray Live In Concert, Jonas Reinhardt (in their live incarnation) - SF bands have proven you can be fun and smart at the same time. Boyz IV Men follow in this great tradition as the torch carriers for sweaty dance floor jams done so totally right. Armed with analog synths and a minimal drumkit, they blast out electro jams that feel like a less precious Ratatat or a more DIY minded Justice or Simian Mobile Disco. We love how they maintain a raw and gritty sound in the midst of their all out body moving bangers. So damn good!
The lp comes with a coupon for a digital download of the album.
Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!! Packaged in super swank, metallic bronze silk screened covers, each on hand numbered, and each one with a random photograph insert.
Seattle-based duo The Bran Flakes have put together another cherry of an album. Sonic plunderers who must have ridiculous amounts of thrift-store $1 records, The Bran Flakes painstakingly yet assuredly cut everything up -- macabre children's songs, sleigh bells, latin percussive rattles, afro cuban drumming, tooting horns, minor key strings, occasional drum 'n bass, bad disco, some goofy approximations of dub, wurlitzer organ, noir film samples, oompah oompah in the left channel, funky drummer-style breakbeat on the right -- and arrange everything into precise sonic juxtapositions, resulting in a very confident and enjoyable trip from beginning to end (in fact the end is a three minute long recitation of people's names, jesus how long did it take them to cut *that* stuff together?)
The album's highest point comes when they cut up (Terry Riley "You're Nogood"-style!) everyone's favorite muppets Kermit and Fozzie Bear singing "Movin' right along...". It's so frickin' wonderful and happy go lucky -- can't you just see 'em in the Studebaker? While most comparisons to fellow cut 'n pasters involve names like Wobbly and Negativland, I think the group will fit nicely right next to your Kid Koala tape, your People Like Us cd, and maybe even your 12" collection of solemn DJ Shadow, who uses the same tools -- vinyl -- but never cracks a smile, whereas The Bran Flakes are all about hilarity. Look at what moog pioneer Jean Jacques Perrey says about 'em:
"I enjoyed your record very much, it is so fresh, so cool, made for people who have a 'child soul' and at the same time perfectly elaborated harmonically and technically with some funny winks to other composers."
Recommended for the lighthearted!
Born in 1896 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Max Brand lived throughout Europe before emmigrating to the US in 1946. A contemporary of Schoenberg, Berg, Weil and Kranek, Brand was one of the early pioneers of electronic music, but most of his works were destroyed or lost and he slipped into obscurity. (Or, he never existed and this disc is a clever hoax, just the kind of thing we like!) Disc One of this set is a primer of Max Brand's multi-faceted electronic works, including some bizarre commercials. Disc Two is a tribute to him by members of the new electronic scene in Vienna including: Pita, Pure, Fon, Curd Duca and others.
Another new release on Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin (along with Moevot, Starlite Coffins, Rich Jacobs and more on this week's list!), this one from new to us Oakland outfit Bre'r, who traffics in the sort of sound we can't ever seem to get enough of, sun dappled and dusty expanses of hazy drift, washed out and softly psychedelic, faded and wreathed in a sort of soft focus gauze, sounding a little like Stars Of The Lid recorded By Tim Hecker, or something that might end up on Time Released Sound, pastoral smoldering drifts of reverbed guitars, floating above soft swirls of rumbling drones and roiling soft noise shimmer, meditative and tranquil, darkly contemplative, blissfully burnt zoner drift of the highest order, the perfect late night soundtrack, the ideal headphone score for a lonely wander through the empty streets of some mysterious city, lush and lovely, but with just a hint of sinister sonic shadow. Gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Frank Bretschneider is one of the founders of the German electronic collective Raster / Noton, recording as both Komet and Produkt. For his second record with Mille Plateaux, he has kept things very simple, even for the ultra-stripped down simplicity of minimalist techno that has defined the Raster sound. "Curve" begins with a simple slow motion bass techno pulse around 80-85 bpm
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Isn't it nice when friends become friends with other friends? We sorta get that feeling from this release, as local boys Brian Fraser and Chris Palmatier were AQ faves upon the release of their second album Vectors and now this new disc sees them joining the illustrious ranks of the Dielectric Recordings Empire run by *our* friends Drew and Stephanie... Better yet, B and C don't disappoint with 3, it's a fine disc of light and airy (Airy?) indie rock infused electronica (or electronica infused indie rock?), very creative and summery and mellow and pretty, with room for laptops and guitars and panpipes and random voice recordings and much studio-as-instrument-goings-on. We sell a lot of the likes of the Postal Service and The Books and Boards Of Canada and there's no reason this shouldn't go in the shopping basket with the rest of 'em. Nice.
Local favorites Brian And Chris get drafted by AQ pal Drucifer's Dielectric Records to contribute to their very distinctive and very cool series of bright orange twelve inches. Those of you familiar with B&C's unique post rock/electronica hybrid will to a certain extent know what to expect. Those of you new to the wonderful world of Brian And Chris this is as good a place to start as any. Side one starts off with a deep ambient drone that eventually gives way to muffled lo-fi clattery jungle beats, fluttery flutes, tinkling chimes and slow burning sonic swells before a sort-of funky bassline drops and anchors the whole thing giving it some serious rhythmic heft. The second track is all skittery and jazzy and very MoWax sounding, with warm and silky chords, wah guitars and Chinese melodies above rolling rumbling basslines.
Side two are two versions of the same track. The "LP Version" is some seriously sweet post rock ala Tortoise or Godspeed, epic expansive rhythmic workouts, with shimmering guitars but with just enough electronic squelch and skitter to make it distinctly B&C. The "Dude, I Didn't Expect The Ewoks Mix" is all glitched out and stretched out and a little chopped up turning it into a sort-of dub of the original. Good stuff!
If Jim O'Rourke wasn't so afflicted with attention deficit disorder, if Boards of Canada weren't so s-l-o-w in making new records, if the Champs weren't on tour all the time -- maybe they all coulda gotten together and made a record as pretty as this one. Brian and Chris are a coolly eclectic local duo whose record is so fresh, gentle, accomplished and unhurried that it's taken us by surprise. When an album is this eclectic we are usually a little suspicious -- but Brian & Chris' "Vectors" album totally works. Bravo.
Starting with a shuffling bass groove layered over with atmospherics full of texture and grit, the record would at first seem to be yet more popular electronics in the vein of Mouse on Mars or Boards of Canada. But before you know it the electronics have been replaced by echoing acoustic blues guitar that's foregrounded right in your eardrum, while tinny jungle beats cavort way in the background, used more as texture than as booty movers. It's a nice combination you'd like to hear longer, but before long chiming, fingerpicked guitars accompany a lilting, ethereal female voice, soon to be followed by angular shards of art-post-rock very similar to Gastr del Sol (in a good way, not pretentious at all). And as if that weren't fun enough, by the end of the album the perfectly seamless segueways between the genre-bending tracks have placed you squarely in the middle of a Champs-style rock guitar workout. Wow. Highly recommended!
When recording under the pseudonym Ester Brinkmann (a name taken in homage to his dead sister), Thomas Brinkmann leans away from his trademarked techno minimalist tendencies in favor of conceptual abstraction. As with the previous Ester Brinkmann recording
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Recording under the name of his dead sister, Thomas Brinkmann sets up a number of looping mechanical situtaions in which the grooves on shuffling techno singles are literally cut with a blade for the needle to fall into endless locked grooves. As these records are often played on altered turntables with twin tone arms, Brinkmann's rigid rhythms percolate and warble with a seasick motion that strangely sounds like Can's "Future Days". Blixa Bargeld makes an uncredited vocal appearance on the first track of the album.
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We've already made the claim that the 20' to 2000 series is to be listened to sequentially as an aurally cohesive unit. And this is no exception. Brinkmann's contribution, as the seventh in the monthly series counting down to the year 2000, picks up the pace from Senking's analogue complexities, with dueling turntables that build shuffling, yet entirely soul-less house beats, for an alienated dance music for sub-atomic particles.
Thomas Brinkmann offers more of a schizophonic single with his "46 Valentino" ep. The A side favors his more club friendly techno sounds with a twin tone-arm reconstruction of Richie Hawtin (I'm guessing it's the old "Train Trac" single by F.U.S.E.) and with some Depeche Mode references as well. The flipside features more of an much more adventurous track in "Monomexico" with a Steve
We recently made Thomas Brinkman's Klick Revolution an AQ Record of the Week, and have been listening to it pretty much non stop. So much so that we almost forgot that we had previously reviewed his first "Klick" record from 2000, which while maybe not some strange tribute to pinball, still manages to be a glorious collection of clicks and pop and whir and hiss. Anyone who has been digging Klick Revolution will definitely want to pick its precursor up as well. Here's what we had to say about it when we first listed a while back:
On Klick, Thomas Brinkmann borrows Christian Marclay's technique of literally slicing the grooves of his records with a razorblade to add some new elements to his sterile techno minimalism. While this may be Brinkmann's most sonically unsettling record, it manages to retain his trademark techno structuralism, albeit sounding as if the needle is struggling through a thick layer of grime. The erratic glitches of surface noise and the lulling stutter of run out grooves stand much more in the forefront of Brinkmann's Klick than on previous works. His sterile dub techniques dissolve fragments of surface noise into ghostly decay and generate a delicate flutter much like distant helicopter blades or the choral chatter of locusts. All in all, this is a successful departure for Brinkmann, one that takes him outside of the cold rigidity of most techno minimalism and into the sloppiness of the natural world. Fans of Philip Jeck will definitely appreciate.
Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. We are suckers for all the sounds that most other folks hate. So much care is spent mastering records perfectly, desperately trying to keep lps from getting dusty or scratched. When most of the time we hear a record and think how much better it would sound with some record crackle, or pops and clicks. We could literally hear the same record, recorded in a state of the art studio, and then on a handheld tape recorder in the forest during a thunderstorm, and we're pretty sure you can guess which one would have us flipping out.
In the past we've discovered dreamy drone records just drenched in fuzz and record static, L. Chasse even recorded a record dedicated to our very own Allan, that emulated the sound or record crackle. You could say we're obsessed. There's something about that sound, it's so raw and pure and beautiful sounding. It may be an unwanted byproduct to most, but to us it's one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
This new record from Thomas Brinkmann, Klick Revolution, is an entire record of super minimal, skeletal techno, constructed completely from the static and buzz of needle on vinyl. At least it sounds like it. And the sleeve is adorned with the garage sale center labels of all the lps ostensibly used in the making of this record. The strange thing is, Brinkmann has always seemed very clinical, his sounds dry and clipped, as if his records were made in a lab, so it's exciting to hear, a very crisp, clipped sounding record made out of the very opposite sort of elements. Organic analog distortion and inconsistencies transformed into cool digital clickery. The other strange thing is that Klick Revolution seems to be Brinkmann's tribute, or homage to the pinball machine, a very convoluted concept concerning the inclined plane in a locked box and Sisyphus playing pinball with a rolling stone... Not sure we get it, but we do LOVE pinball, and by now it should be obvious how much we love record crackle, so needless to say THIS RECORD RULES.
Based on live performances utilizing turntables and locked groove records, these pieces are definitely reminiscent of Pierre Bastien, Strotter Inst. and other modern avant turntablists, but the sound is definitely all Brinkmann. Hypnotic rhythms, a super skeletal techno, a symphony of Geiger counters, the kick drum is a pop, the shuffling snare is a tiny clipped burst of static. So completely hypnotic. He incorporates longer snippets from the records too but only briefly, introducing bits of melody, weird textured sounds, creepy cinematic elements, each surfacing for a moment before fading out.
Strangely impossibly gorgeous and lush considering how barebones and skeletal this is. Somewhere between heroin house, Pop Ambient and maybe even haunted house, a strange and wonderful world where sound is measured in clicks and skips, buzz and fuzz, snap, crackle, pop and very little else. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir. Click. Pop. Buzz. Fuzz. Whir...
Lucky Hands is album number 13 for German techno producer Thomas Brinkmann, happily marching down his own path of idiosyncratic minimalist techno. He's at his best when the rhythms pick up the tempo quite a bit as on the first couple tracks on Lucky Hands, when his taut slightly dubbed basslines propel the percolating synths. "Drops" is one such number, venturing beyond post-disco revisions of tech-house thanks to Brinkmann's unmistakable style. He follows this up with "Work" which sounds a bit more like T. Raumschmiere recycling Deep Purple guitar licks as he drops a fantastically stupid anthemic melody on top of his motorik rhythm. Brinkmann slows things down a bit, veering toward Tarwater's sultry / icy monotone with a couple of tracks in the middle of the record including an unrecognizable cover of The Smiths' "The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get" with vocals from Tusia Beridze.
"Rosa" compiles a handful of the singles that Thomas Brinkmann released on Max Ernst of tracks that were titled with women's names. The tracks from this series shift away from his techno utilitarianism to incorporate a greater sensitivity to melody and texture. His technique of razor blading locked grooves into vinyl appears to remain the same as elements of Plastikman's "Consumed," Mouse On Mars' "Vulvaland," and any number of Wolfgang Voigt tracks have been mashed into these terse techno grooves.
Brinkmann's "Row" is another selection of tracks from the MaxErnst vinyl catalogue, with a couple of tracks being revisions of those vinyl cuts. Unlike the gritty texturalism of "Klick," this collection finds Brinkmann returning to the classic Profan sound that the Voigt brothers had been producing out of Cologne a couple years back. This is a smooth, precise techno with a simple yet very effective monophunk groove punctuated by low-key melodies. "Mexico" is one of the detours from the techno trax with a looping vocal sample phased into a Steve Reichian repetitive pattern before kicking into a nifty techno shuffle. Alongside "Mexico" which came from (max.E.8), Brinkmann's included "Corvette" (from max.E.10), "N.M.Q.P. (from Fragmente, Swiss vinyl), "maxE.3" (new version), "max.E.3" (another new version), "max.E.4" (new version), "isch" (from the limited Oral CDR), "Loplop" (from max.E.6), "'ribosom" (from SupposÈ 170), "toothpaste" (unreleased). A really collection album from one of electronica's finest!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
At last, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Noise Made By People has arrived!
Cup totally adored their pre-album Pendulum cdep, and after giving the HaHa Sound a first listen she feared that this sophomore effort's brightest highlights might've been packed onto that lil' ep. For instance, the ep's title track bursts forth as the second song on the album and is clearly one of its standouts. It's undeniably irresistible! Thoroughly taken with that song as well as the gloriously obtuse, bloopy electronic instrumentals, she initially found herself somewhat disoriented with the rest that followed (as you might be able to tell 'cause she's speaking about it in the third person), but then she gave it a second spin... and the album blossomed before her very eyes/ears!
Vocalist Trish Keenan murmurs and sings in her wistful, lullaby-perfect voice that nears the clarity and sweetness of Karen Carpenter or Julee Cruise. It's the perfect foil for the fizzing and churning backdrop of analog synths, guitars, bass and percussion created by Roj Stevens, Tim Felton, James Cargill and Steve Perkins - tipping their collective hat to '60s Brill Building girl groups, the grand sentimental lovey-dovey-ness of Bacharach, and Esquivelian space age bachelor pads everywhere. Broadcast skillfully craft glistening, starry-eyed music that swirls and creaks like an old carousel, but just as ably veer off into more eccentric, trippy territory a la Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Joe Meek (psst, this contrast is perfectly exemplified at the meeting between songs 7 and 8 - "Lunch Hour Pops" and "Black Umbrellas" - check 'em out!). Perhaps the time has come that the occlusive "Stereolab Jr." tag they've been saddled with (granted, quite aptly so) may be tossed in the trash. Very recommended!
At last, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Noise People Make has arrived and in two different packaging selections! If you're a big Broadcast fan you might wanna scoop up this special (very Radiohead-ish) book edition. Making its appearance slightly in advance of the regular ol' jewelcase version, it's not really a book at all, but more of a cd-sized hardback book cover with lyrics and liner notes printed on 2 fold-out cardstock pages.
Okay, now that we've got the packaging commentary out of the way, onwards to the music...
Cup totally adored their pre-album Pendulum cdep, and after giving the HaHa Sound a first listen she feared that this sophomore effort's brightest highlights might've been packed onto that lil' ep. For instance, the ep's title track bursts forth as the second song on the album and is clearly one of its standouts. It's undeniably irresistible! Thoroughly taken with that song as well as the gloriously obtuse, bloopy electronic instrumentals, she initially found herself somewhat disoriented with the rest that followed (as you might be able to tell 'cause she's speaking about it in the third person), but then she gave it a second spin... and the album blossomed before her very eyes/ears!
Vocalist Trish Keenan murmurs and sings in her wistful, lullaby-perfect voice that nears the clarity and sweetness of Karen Carpenter or Julee Cruise. It's the perfect foil for the fizzing and churning backdrop of analog synths, guitars, bass and percussion created by Roj Stevens, Tim Felton, James Cargill and Steve Perkins - tipping their collective hat to '60s Brill Building girl groups, the grand sentimental lovey-dovey-ness of Bacharach, and Esquivelian space age bachelor pads everywhere. Broadcast skillfully craft glistening, starry-eyed music that swirls and creaks like an old carousel, but just as ably veer off into more eccentric, trippy territory a la Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Joe Meek (psst, this contrast is perfectly exemplified at the meeting between songs 7 and 8 - "Lunch Hour Pops" and "Black Umbrellas" - check 'em out!). Perhaps the time has come that the occlusive "Stereolab Jr." tag they've been saddled with (granted, quite aptly so) may be tossed in the trash. Very recommended!
At last, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Noise People Make has arrived!
Cup totally adored their pre-album Pendulum cdep, and after giving the HaHa Sound a first listen she feared that this sophomore effort's brightest highlights might've been packed onto that lil' ep. For instance, the ep's title track bursts forth as the second song on the album and is clearly one of its standouts. It's undeniably irresistible! Thoroughly taken with that song as well as the gloriously obtuse, bloopy electronic instrumentals, she initially found herself somewhat disoriented with the rest that followed (as you might be able to tell 'cause she's speaking about it in the third person), but then she gave it a second spin... and the album blossomed before her very eyes/ears!
Vocalist Trish Keenan murmurs and sings in her wistful, lullaby-perfect voice that nears the clarity and sweetness of Karen Carpenter or Julee Cruise. It's the perfect foil for the fizzing and churning backdrop of analog synths, guitars, bass and percussion created by Roj Stevens, Tim Felton, James Cargill and Steve Perkins - tipping their collective hat to '60s Brill Building girl groups, the grand sentimental lovey-dovey-ness of Bacharach, and Esquivelian space age bachelor pads everywhere. Broadcast skillfully craft glistening, starry-eyed music that swirls and creaks like an old carousel, but just as ably veer off into more eccentric, trippy territory a la Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Joe Meek (psst, this contrast is perfectly exemplified at the meeting between songs 7 and 8 - "Lunch Hour Pops" and "Black Umbrellas" - check 'em out!). Perhaps the time has come that the occlusive "Stereolab Jr." tag they've been saddled with (granted, quite aptly so) may be tossed in the trash. Very recommended!
Presenting a much more feisty, energetic Broadcast than on their last album The Noise People Make. There's only six songs here, but they're mighty fine ones. Mighty, indeed! Four of them ring with that familiar dreamy Broadcast sound - shades of their Cardigans/Stereolab leanings still linger but only faintly. They're definitely more fired up these days. Just check out that tight, harder-hit drumming and heavier overall sound. Actually this brings their recorded work more in line with their rockin' live performances. And what about those other two songs? Well, they deserve their own mention that's for sure: the wonderfully incongruous third track "One Hour Empire" and the sixth "Minus Two". It truly sounds like they hopped a time machine back to the '70s and hijacked the BBC Radiophonic Workshop! The former's an eccentric jazzy bleep-bloop exotica number that's plenty entertaining all by itself. The latter begins as a spaced-out robotic spazz-fit that's eventually muscled over by more frantic drumming and melodic female sighs. Actually if the last few Add N To (X) albums have left you rather disgruntled and disappointed (as they have us) and if this new EP is any indication, you might want to switch over to the Broadcast team! Recommended.
Ooooh soooo gooood! As seems to be the case with each new Broadcast album, a couple of listens is all it takes to get Tender Buttons hooks into ya! The effects of Broadcast's pop intoxicants aren't as immediate nor as obvious here as those of 2003's The HaHa Sound, but they're no less potent. Broadcast continue to melt their sound into the ultra-pretty sounds of '60s girl groups. In doing so, they perfectly showcase lead vocalist Trish Keenan's unbelievably lovely vocals which occasionally take on a more somber tone here than they did on the airier HaHa Sound. Despite the undeniable sweetness of Keenan's voice, the band always gracefully sidestep excessive syrupiness with the counterbalance of heavier guitars, a propulsive groovy rhythm section and a broad spectrum of hefty analog synth melodies and textures. A luminous dreamboat with a tiger in its tank. Swoon!
An absolute delight from start to finish! Like a big ol' box of Crayolas, The Future Crayon is a collection of Broadcast rarities. The eighteen tracks are compiled from singles, eps, and compilations dating back to 1998. They effectively remind us that while this UK band is perhaps best known for their plush synth-driven pop, their musical spectrum stretches far beyond that into jazz, space age, exotica, krautrock, prog, and the science fair even! Needless to say, your ears will surely find that they're so much more delicious than those waxy coloring implements. They're more like the aural equivalent of a fifty scoop sundae -- towering in dream pop yumminess comprised of soft creamy sherbet (Trish Keenan vocals! sigh!), occasional bloops of marshmallow cream and hot fudge (their analog synthesizers!), a sprinkling of nuts and sugary bits (the snappy often jazzy percussion as well as those synths again!). It's all perfectly summed up in the cd's sixteenth and seventeenth numbers "Minus Two" and "Violent Playground", both taken from their 2003 EP Pendulum. Fantastic! Yes, recommended!
This is the second solo album from Joel Peterson (bassist for Omaha, NE's The Faint), and its much more eclectic and active than it's glitchy electronic predecessor. From track to track he follows his whim, jumping from style to style, trying out different instrumentation -- throwing in tracks that utilize much more obviously acoustic (i.e, unprocessed or effected) instruments like cello and piano. Overall, Fulfilled: Complete shifts randomly (and often jarringly) between three quite different styles: glitchy lite industrial ("Italian Wardrobe"), moody chamber arrangements ("Induction" and "Practice Practice Practice") and thumpin' DAF-style tracks with vocals ("Fall In And Down" and "Move"). The latter should particularly please the Faint fans who were hoping his solo stuff would more closely resemble his band's.
