The first new music from Burial in 4+ years, this one hardly needs a review at all, the master of dark moody soul inflected minimal dubstep does it again, with the murky melancholy "Street Halo", which ditches some of the more overt dubsteppiness of past records, for something a bit more techno flecked, the beat a muted four on the floor pulse, while the surrounding sounds remain appropriately washed out and dreamlike, some spectral soulful female vox just add to the vibe. We actually spun this at 33 the first few times, and holy shit, not sure if it's just us, but might sound even better that way, syrupy and witch house-y, total slo-mo cough syrup blackened dub electro drag. But even at the right speed of 45, it's pretty dang perfect, only a slight swerve from the dubbed out soul of Untrue.
"NYC" slows it way down, lacing some electro skitter and shuffling techno with a seriously dubbed out production and some sped up soul samples, spare and skeletal, wreathed in a late night, winding down, chill out haze. And finally "Stolen Dog" is a dubby downtempo electro soul ballad, with a super hooky main melody, warm swirling low end swells, a skittery beat buried in the mix, and still more vocal soul. So good.
Could be kinda limited, we're not sure, and the copies we got in this week have been going fast, so when/if we run out, be prepared. Hopefully we can get more sometime soon though.
Like the title suggests, this is the cd version of Burial's last two 12"s. 6 tracks, almost an hour long, complete with obi 'cause it's a Japanese import. Both 12"s are pretty much out of print, so if you missed them, you gotta get this!
Street Halo was the first new music we had heard from Burial in 4+ years, and hardly needed a review at all (then or now), needless to say, the master of dark moody soul inflected minimal dubstep does it again, just check out the murky melancholy "Street Halo", which ditches some of the more overt dubsteppiness of past records, for something a bit more techno flecked, the beat a muted four on the floor pulse, while the surrounding sounds remain appropriately washed out and dreamlike, some spectral soulful female vox just add to the vibe. We actually spun the vinyl version of this at 33 the first few times, and holy shit, not sure if it's just us, but might sound even better that way, syrupy and witch house-y, total slomo cough syrup blackened dub electro drag. Too bad you can't easily slow down a cd, but even at the right speed of 45, it's pretty dang perfect, only a slight swerve from the dubbed out soul of Untrue.
"NYC" slows things way down, lacing some electro skitter and shuffling techno with a seriously dubbed out production and some sped up soul samples, still spare and skeletal, wreathed in a late night, winding down, chill out haze. And finally "Stolen Dog" is a dubby downtempo electro soul ballad, with a super hooky main melody, warm swirling low end swells, a skittery beat buried in the mix, and still more vocal soul. So good!
Beautifully sad and heavy, "Kindred" is laid out like a dystopic symphonic requiem that morphs through a slow-motion roughshodden landscape. Lonely remote vocals spliced and polished into barely discernible words pitter-patter over record crackle, and far-off doomy atmospheres as clanging minimal garage rhythms propel forward and then drop out at irregular intervals. "Loner" steps it up with arpeggiated synths and an anxious pace with a cinematic car chase theme feel and RnB-ish vocal shadows buried underneath a layer of sonic grit and asphalt that freefalls into a strange haunted ambiance. "Ashtray Wasp" show a bit more light and hope at first. The vocals culled from cell phone recordings give a broader sense of actual song structure with sped up minimalist Phillip Glass-like orchestrations wrapping the song in a dramatically understated fury, eventually disintegrating into an extended oceanic womb of crackling unease. The final salvo turning into a lyrical filigree of piano, cascading vocal swatches and waves of radio static that fades like the night into the stratosphere. Chilling!
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Record of the year, 2007. As far as some of us are concerned, there's no question. Burial's first album was an eponymous release on Kode 9's Hyperdub imprint and really came out of nowhere. Here was this amalgamation of British dance tropes (e.g. dubstep, 2-step garage, darkcore drum & bass, etc.) into a magnificent exercise in mood engineering. Even though an urban malaise echoes through the whollop bass-bin rattle of most dubstep, that first Burial record mined a melancholy whose dramatic power has never been heard in dubstep, and rarely matched even by such downbeat experts as Massive Attack, Boards of Canada, Slowdive, or even Joy Division.
So with his second album Untrue, the aesthetic framework for Burial remains intact; yet the anonymous figure behind Burial has admitted that he was seeking a "downcast euphoria." You know what, he fucking nailed it. All of the sounds retain the first album's urban dourness reverberating through each electron and washed drone. The hovering basslines which once stalked the darkest of jungle's rhythms are ghostly presences flickering around Burial's atypical drum programming, which by his own admission is done by hand without the aid of a sequencer. The clipped, 2-step breakbeats always appear as the cocking of a gun; but it doesn't seem like Burial is taking aim at his audience. Rather, it's metaphor for the cold, inhumane existence in the grimy parts of London, where violence is just another thing to shrug at and move beyond. All of these sounds are clearly present in Burial's debut album, but the "euphoric" part of Untrue's intention is found in Burial's use of voice. Taking a cappella tunes sung by his friends (sometimes, left as a voice mail on his cellphone), Burial has crafted an eerie cast of disembodied vocals, twisted into cybernetic R&B croons, all clipped and compressed in the same manner as his pistol-whipped snare cracks. It's as if the human voice alone can transcend the dire circumstances of our earthly confines, even when the songs reflected broken dreams and a dwindling hope. Burial seeks out the fleeting moments of beauty and raw emotion, codifying it through his impeccable craft on this very impressive and soon to be iconic recording. If you're not hearing it from us, you'll hear from somebody else: Burial's Untrue is the best record of 2007.
This record has totally knocked us for a loop. An impossible mix of grimy dubstep, murky triphop, and minimal spaced out dub. When we first threw this on we were immediately transported back to when we first heard Massive Attack, or Portishead, and a whole new world suddenly opened up to us. A creepy, muted world of barebones beats and haunting atmospheres that would go on to inform our musical tastes forever.
This is the first release on Hyperdub, a label run by grime/dubstep DJ Kode9, and we expected a blasting barrage of grimy beats, but instead, were sucked into a swirling vortex of late night groove and midnight stutter. Think those Rhythm And Sound Burial Mix eps, mixed with some Pole-like glitched out dub, and some slow burning Portishead smolder. Creepy and crawly, mysterious and moody. Beats suspended in a black shimmering fog, snippets of vocals, crooning, toasting, drenched in reverb, chopped up and let loose to drift over super dark, muffled dubscapes. Huge rumbling bass lines, like distant foghorns, dreamy ambience sort of drifting and ethereal but so so ominous. Tiny sonic sparkles glimmer like some alien sonar, drifting dreamily through fuzzy darkness. Drowned and submerged grooves, all muffled muted melody and shuffling minimal beats. Suffocating atmospheres of low end thrum, record crackle and shortwave interference. Some sort of slithering slinky dubstep shuffle slowed waaaaaaaaay down, into a blackened glacial dub jam. So fucking awesome. Our newest every night late night listen. A record of perfect dark and damaged dubbed out lullabies.
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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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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Clay Ruby's long running Burial Hex project is a tough outfit to pin down, with a sound that's in constant flux, from oppressive necro electronics, to haunting cinematic strings, to crumbling industrial dronemusic, to ritual lo-fi ambience. Now, on In Psychic Defense, we get a whole 'nother side of that sound. The opener is a strange, bit of gothic balladry, a grim torch song, with skittery programmed beats, beneath spidery psych folk filigree, thick warmly, woozy basslines, and Ruby's dramatic croon, nestled amidst swirls of chordal organ thrum, dense rumbles... but soon, that sound dissipates, leaving just a sonic shadow / skeleton, minimal swells, tinkling Goblin like melodies, suspended in a sprawl of hushed shimmer, haunting and moody, this stretch of brooding ambience, peppered with bursts of caustic noise, whispered vox, more slippery, sinewy bass - and then a surprising, almost hour music coda, the grim whispers and haunting drones woven into a skittery funky beat, before devolving into a final burst of low end pulses. The second track is another sprawling epic, and is another sonic aboutface, rooted in some sort of martial industrial music, a muted, murky rhythm, sweeping synth swirls, and some creepy processed vokills, it's another gloomy ballad, but this one more tripped out and almost dubby, those swoonsome string-like shimmers faded and washed out, and like the first track, there's another unexpected detour into some straight up dance music, a looped groove, also pretty house, underpinned by some of the shadowy sonics from the first part of the song, but for the most part, weirdly groovy funk, before it too transforms into a bleak psych-drone outdo.
Those two tracks make up more than half of the record, with the relatively shorter tracks exploring still more unfamiliar territory, with a real dance music bent surfacing throughout, "Fantasie" sounds like Coil at their danciest, "Und Fuge" is all glimmering synths and percolating cosmic melodies, while "To Birth The Rotted Sun" returns to the gothic doom-ed balladry of the opener, with distorted percussion, and pounded piano, wreathed in strange electronic squiggle, and pocked with weird effects, but then instead of a croon, the vocals explode in a hysterical shriek, the rhythm bursting into chaos right alongside, a weird sort of black metal / industrial torch song / neo-folk hybrid, that's pretty strange, and really cool.
Finally, "(Or: War)" is a sprawl of power electronics, dense tangles of misfiring circuitry and analog sputter, all draped over moaning low end slo-mo melodies, and pitch shifted crooning, culminating in closer "The Tower", another weirdo industrial funk workout, low slung bass, a pulsing rhythm, squelchy low end, smears of gristly static, echoey clouds of chordal thrum, but all anchored by some seriously funky grooviness. There's definitely a high WTF factor here, but then that's pretty much the case with all the Burial Hex records. Cool, weird stuff for sure!
Here's a 2013 Record Store Day release that we just discovered we still had a small stash of! Well known collector/musician Joe Bussard doing a couple of acoustic guitar songs on an old-timey 78 rpm 10" record, packaged in a plain manilla sleeve like in the old days. Bussard's been collecting jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, etc. 78's since the 1940s and so he sure knows how it ought to sound, the two tracks "Guitar Rag" and "Screwdriver Slide" (yep, played with a screwdriver) coming off like authentic dusty (but lively) old tunes indeed.
For fans of John Fahey (who's first recordings came out on Bussard's own Fonotone label), Jack Rose, and all the old-timey down-home stuff those guys were fans of, too...
LIMITED TO 625 COPIES.
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Olaf Bender - founder of the Rastermusic label and member of Signal - provides us with Volume 5 of the 20 to 2000 series. As this series has been progressing, one gets the impression that each artist (or the curator of the series) is attempting to link these bursts of minimalist electronica into a cogent whole pieced together of disparate fragments. From the rhythmic shards of Ilpo Vaisainen & Komet violated by Ryoji Ikeda's blistering sine waves, the series took a pleasant shift into the minimalism of Coh and now Byetone, who has expanded the spaces of silence to wrap around warm hypnotic pulses which erraticly appear.
It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally, TWO aQ staffers accidentally review the same record, and usually, we try to just cram them together into one (sort of) cohesive single review, but this time we figured, screw it, here's two different aQ-er's takes on the latest from Byetone, a record we liked so much we reviewed it twice! See if you can guess who wrote which!!
Review one:
It's weird to say, but it seems like the most compellingly funky electronic music is coming from a camp that pretty much perfected the ultimate cold clinical electronic sound. Raster-Noton for years has been home to icy cold collections of bleep and click, him and hiss, taking music and seemingly reducing it to it's most elemental form, and arranging it into machine like rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE that stuff, and hearing pristine arrangements of ultra low, rib cage rattling lows, and dog whistle highs, rhythms created from clipped static and 1 bit bursts, total mad scientist genius. But all along, it seemed like something lurked just below the surface. A funkiness that the artists seemed to be combating, as if the whole thing was an elaborate sonic ploy to keep the funk at bay. And then suddenly, one of the brave ones, decided to let a little of the funk seep into his audio experiments, and it was good. Too good. Too good to not let more in. And soon, it was too late, and then against all odds, and in an ironic twist of sonic fate, people like Alva Noto were crafting some of THEE funkiest sounds we'd ever heard, all assembled from the same elements, beeps and clicks, 1 bit bursts and sine waves, culminating in the recently reviewed Univrs record.
But then along comes Byetone, not to be outdone, takes those same elements, and decides to not just let the funk seep into his sounds, but to go all out, and craft lush expansive soundscapes, epic and cinematic, proving that those same ingredients could be twisted up into all new shapes, which brings us to Symeta, a gorgeously lush collection of electronica, that slips easily from super clinical click and buzz, to warm lush chordal swells, often in the same song, the various elements arranged into killer grooves and funky beats, with some of the tracks sounding almost Pop Ambient, that lush and lovely, while others stayed more clinical, and still others found a middle ground, which strangely enough sounds like a weird take on the whole Goblin/Carpenter sci-fi future-retro synthscape thing, but somehow cooler, and more -actually- sci-fi sounding, and more hauntingly futuristic, with Byetone coaxing some seriously gristly buzz and tripped out psychedelia from his strange sonic laboratory.
Awesome!
Review two:
Olaf Bender's Byetone project is hardly prolific, but he has proven to be strongly consistent in his clinical electronica, which nudges the signature Raster-Noton sound of glitch 'n' tone on a trajectory that might not be all that averse to the dancefloor. Symeta comes three years after the much acclaimed Death Of A Typographer; and like that earlier record, this one also owes quite a bit to the formative work of Pan Sonic and Mika Vainio's solo album Metri. The hypnotic, adrenaline-pulsed piece of minimalist techno on "Opal" is right out of the Vainio playbook, slowly ramping a militant drum-roll from Bender's drum machine out of a throbbing basspulse radiating ominous hisses and x-ray frequencies. "Helix" and "Black Peace" nod toward the latter Pan Sonic works of gnarled, distorted electronica through an excellent track of grimy blocks of electronic riffage, caustic blasts of noise, and dubstepping electro backbeats, in the construction of some exceptional, high-pressure chamber electronica. Lest you think that it's all Vainio all the time, the first three blips from the album opening "Topas" are devilishly close to the robotic sequencing that Kraftwerk used to build their onomatopoeic "Boing Boom Tschak." Another great record from Raster-Noton.
Patric (Catani) is a member of DHR/Grand Royal recording artists EC8OR.
We've been diggin' some killer late '70s, early '80s French punk rock lately, or "paink" as the as the recent compilation of that name has it, discovering some new obscure faves from the scene we hadn't known of before, bands to file alongside Soggy and Metal Urbain in the realm of Stooges-y, snotty, sometimes synth-laced underground French-speaking rawk from the new wave era. Here's a good example, reissued for the first time on cd (and also on vinyl too, backordered at the moment - but the the cd has 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks anyway).
C.O.M.A., aka Clinik Organik Musak Anatomik (great name, whatever it means exactly!), originally unleashed this way weird and super rare full-length, their only album, in 1979. It's some intense & experimental, minimal wave synth punk, manifested with shamboblic precision, their odd "musak" loaded with blurting synthesizer, noisy guitar, mechanical drumbeats, distorted disembodied vocals (often a gravelly croak), and electronic FX galore. Some tracks are more abstract, like the soundscapey segue of "Consequences", consisting of about 50 percent feedback, while others, like "Demain", are more groove-oriented, dark and dancey new wave numbers, still loaded with synth strangeness, to which we can totally imagine stylish French punks doing some kind of robo-pogo.
Yup, it's a diverse disc, wherein a moody, sparse piano piece like "Coma" could be followed by the hard-charging mechano-aggro beatdown of "Assaut", complete with wiggly wild guitar/synth solo.
The sporadic mad scientist's laboratory bleep bloop of "La Valse A Mutant" kinda has a Francophone "Hardcore Devo" vibe, and definitely Devo were an inspiration on this groop, along with the likes of Kraftwerk, Wire, and The Residents. Think Devo meets Metal Urbain, you're on the right track. Great stuff. C.O.M.A. didn't appear on that Paink comp, we don't know why, they shoulda been, though maybe just a bit weirder than the others. Fans of stuff on Medical and Dark Entries ought to check it out...
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"Mix Up" was the first album from Cabaret Voltaire, the pioneering Industrial trio of Richard H. Kirk, Chris Watson, and Stephen Mallinder, and is qualitatively the best from that period for Cabaret Voltaire. Their sound centered around the dessication of
"Nag Nag Nag" was an early single for Cabaret Voltaire, recording it initially back in 1979 when they mere meshing a hollowed-out electro-punk sound with William S. Burroughs' notion of the cut-up. Along with the title track, this features three contemporary remixes from Montreal's Akufen, CV's mainman Richard H. Kirk, and Vice-approved electro bass-bin boomers Tiga &�Zyntherius.
Originally released in 1981 through Rough Trade, Cabaret Voltaire's third album "Red Mecca" now gets another reissue courtesy of the fine folks at Mute! Having taken their name from the club started in Zurich by the principals of the Dada art movement during
"The Living Legends" is a collection of the earliest Cabaret Voltaire singles recorded for Rough Trade between 1978 and 1981. While still lumped in with the Industrial family alongside Psychic TV, SPK, and Chris and Cosey, the Cabs' may have been the most
The Northern industrialized town of Sheffield, England was home not only to Cabaret Voltaire, but also to Warp Records, which is probably where the notion of a 'sound of Sheffield' came from. The period in question found the 'Cabs' on EMI, thus providing the band with much better access to equipment and good studios. They (Stephen Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk, as Chris Watson had departed to form The Hafler Trio with Andrew McKenzie) took the opportunity to further investigate the William S. Burroughs idea of the cut-up within a system of organized repitition. At the center of the Cabs' slice-n-dice funk, gritty beat-box repititions, and media samples was a urgency that club culture was a viable political atmosphere standing in opposition to mainstream control tactics. The sound that Cabaret Voltaire produced during this period was an incredibly influential one, inspiring Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, the early incarnations of Wax Trax / Ministry, and the ubiquitous presence of Adrian Sherwood's production work throughout the '80s. This influence ended up becoming a double-edged sword for the Cabs, as many of their innovations - the paranoid repititions of arpeggiating synths and their stuttering use of media samples (as in "Sensoria," with the constant declaration: "Do Right, D-D-Do Right") - have become incredibly tired, vapid signifiers of where Industrial Music was going to end up. There was of course a reason why so many artists had taken the ideas from this period of Cabaret Voltaire: it worked on the dance floor.
Latest analog onslaught from this Midwestern duo who add a distinctly kitchen sink aesthetic to their brand of guitar/synth/effects soundscapery. After a brief bit of simulated field recording, cricket like electronic chitter and deep low end thrum, the record slips right into a swirling soft cacophony of warm whirring tones, wild electronics careening every which way, fragmented rhythms, clatter and crunch and bloop and bleep, spidery guitar melodies, on the surface it's a big old swirling mess, but there does seem to be a method to their madness as the various and disparate sounds seem to coalesce into something that does in fact have design, and ends up somehow listenable and not a little bit dreamy. The record continues on, shifting into something a bit more blissed out, a hazy smoldery shimmer peppered with tinkling chiming melodies, and a blurred gauzy drift, before finishing off the side with a weird bit of cartoony sonic chaos.
The B side begins with what sound like it could have been a prime slab of heroin house or minimal dub, but here it's gone totally haywire, all robotic glitch and sputter, everything reverby and echoey, clicks and pulses swooping to and fro, simultaneously dizzyingly disorienting and mesmerizingly hypnotic. The rest of the side plays out as a hazy, druggy, blurred soft psych drift, everything woozy and washed out, before finishing off with another brief bit of twisted electronic faux field recording.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Already sold out from the label, these could very well be the last copies we're able to get�
Includes a download coupon as well.
Caboladies specialize in ecstatic electrical jams that have been making the rounds of the various psychedelic-post-noise-zonked tape and cd-r labels (Arbor, Gneiss, Peasant Magik, Digitalis, etc.). And at one time, these two Kentucky ex-pats (now living in Chicago) shared a tape release with Oneohtrix Point Never. They've always been a bit loopier and more shambolic than Oneohtrix, elevating their work to the druggiest plateau of spiralling bloop and eyes-dilated sparkle that you might expect from an Astral Social Club reworking of J.D. Emmanuel. Many of those tape and cd-r releases had disappeared from physical distribution, although some less than stunning sounding mp3s are making their way around the blogosphere. So, it's really great to hear Caboladies on wax, which is certainly the best medium for these celestial crystallizations blossoming from piles of analogue gear. Taken separately, each piece of electronic gear is dialed to a twitchy spasmodic set of bleeps and swoops, that would be ungainly had Caboladies not playfully situated five, six, eight, ten complementary sets of tones that smear together into an ambient shimmer that's anything but static. These irregular vibrations and delirious patterns are alive with psychedelic energy, that you could almost see fitting into some freak-folk nature jam session... but then again, everything needs to be plugged rather heavily into the grid. Great stuff!
Released in 1979, the same year as The Ann Steel Record we raved about awhile back, Roberto Cacciapaglia's second release, Sei Note In Logica, exists in an entirely different sonic universe, one closer to his minimal classical leanings. While The Ann Steel Record was a retro-future pop album, Sei Note In Logica is an avant-garde systems composition for voices, orchestra and computer, that takes a six note melodic phrase and runs it through every possible musical combination with a choir of female vocalists (including the processed spoken voice of Ann Steel!) and the instrumentation of marimbas. strings and woodwinds and computer-based electronics. Its emphasis on repetition and rhythm puts Cacciapaglia rightfully in a more well known circle of minimalist composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley and is a beautifully epic piece of economic means. Recorded in two parts, this vinyl reissue includes a cd of the vinyl recording plus a bonus version of the acoustic version of the piece with the ensemble without the computer derived enhancements and Ann Steel vocal. It's great to see this on vinyl, but don't hesitate as these great deluxe reissues have a way of disappearing fast! Highly Recommended!
We've been working backwards in the Roberto Cacciapaglia catalog. We started with the eccentric pop of The Ann Steel Record from 1979, then a few lists back moved on to his minimalist systems composed piece, Sei Note In Logica. We'd planned on reviewing his first record, 1975's Sonanze, when Wah Wah originally reissued it, but are glad we waited for this Mupymup version which contains a bonus disc of 15 extra pieces from the period which really detail the beautiful range of this experimental classical composer with both Italian prog and Krautrock ties, and this will most definitely appeal to fans of either genre.
Sonanze is perhaps the most classical leaning release of the bunch, but it definitely has a deep kosmiche feel. Its 10 movements begin with cascading gongs filtered through tape loops against an airy atmosphere of piano runs. Chamber string dramatics lay out the definitive feel of the entire piece of plaintive horns and kettle drums before getting full on cosmic in the Second Movement with pulsating synths and deep phased chanting leading to a percolating soundscape of jaw harp vibrations and swelling strings. The third movement brings in Lubomyr Melnyk-style piano cascades, while the fourth movement introduces a disembodied angelic choir, reminding us of Ligetti's "Lux Aeterna" from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The 5th movement brings in Peter Michael Hamel-style organ arpeggiations devolving into bowed gong scrapes. The 6th movement is very Michael Rother like, with cloudy gliding guitar and on and on it goes, a different feel or instrument in each changing movement, but somehow tied into a deeply introspective and gorgeous whole. Mixed by legendary krautrock producer Rolf-Kaiser Ulrich (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel), Sonanze is definitely our favorite of the three releases we reviewed thus far (though the Ann Steel scores major points because it's so dang out there!).
The bonus disc is also pretty killer, filled with cosmic new age compositions of Moog and piano, filled with wonderful vocal experiments (check out the proto-Grouper track, "Manuela"), gongs and some abstract soundscapes to boot. So totally recommended and these reissues don't stick around long, so get it while you can!
It took a while for us to be able to list these - first our supplier ran out, then we got copies that were damaged, but now we've got more and we're glad to be able to review it, 'cause few records in recent memory have brought us as much unbridled joy as this one. We've heard inklings here and there about this record over the years and when we heard it was being reissued several months ago, our excitement grew with each new report. Straddling the lines between post-disco and new wave electronica without quite being either, The Ann Steel Album from 1979 is the product of avant-classical composer Roberto Cacciapaglia, a multi-instrumentalist that performed on Franco Battiato's Pollution (a unanimous aQ favorite!) and who is mostly known for composing works of progressive classical minimalism (Wah Wah recently reissued his debut Sonanze from 1975, and Sei Note in Logica from the same year as this, is also worth seeking out). But The Ann Steel Album is an entirely different animal, not only because of its skewed electronic dance-pop leanings, but because it features the beautifully strange and charming vocal presence of American model Ann Steel, who obviously is the real star of this record. She sings like a warm bodied android in clipped chirps and strange phrasings like a machine with english language programming for public interaction. Think Siri with a higher register. In the awesome opening song, "My Time", she's ready to sell you on the artificial wonders of modern society, where consciousness is akin to commodification: "My Life runs smooth like a highway / Billboards show me the way" (Belgian synth trio, Telex covered this in a smoother, more well known version on their debut a year later). Every song on here fully rejoices in the positive joys of the synthetic present, making this an infectiously grooving pop art statement with any trace of irony fully camouflaged under layers of glossy surface. It's easy to tell that retro-futurist bands like Stereolab and Sweden's Komeda were influenced heavily by this record, and it fits right in with the brilliant like-minded eccentric synthesis of Bruce Haack and Giorgio Moroder. Not sold yet? Go here to see an awesome clip from Italian dance show, Tilt, from 1980 and just try and remain unconvinced that this is awesome!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu2ESLpe-rE
Thank you Half-Machine for bringing this record back to life! Might just be reissue of the year! And apologies to you non-vinyl folks as this looks like for the present to be vinyl only.
In the opening moments of detached vocals doubled into an eerie chorus and collaged against scraped violin and lengthy field recordings of water, Eyes Set Against The Sun holds more in common with the avant-folk splatter of Islaja or even the Dada delirium of Diana Rogerson's Chrystal Belle Scrodd recordings than what we might have expected. Mira Calix (nee Chantal Passamonte) has always been one of Warp's more oblique electronica artists; but here, the connections to anything Autechre or Aphex are completely removed. Drifting orchestral passages that would easily fit into the Type Records catalogue of languid post-classical composition sit next to whimsically clunky kitchen utensil gamelan suites of intertwining rhythms, and plenty of eccentric juxtapositions in these off-the-rocker folktronica tunes. An intriguing record to say the least!
Mira Calix's debut album on Warp is quite a nice surprise from this South African transplant to London, creating lazy looping grooves of downtempo house beats, dark electro thuds, more-Skam-than-Warp digital skitter, and more than a few nods to Mouse On Mars within sweeping arid desert ambience. Quite good!
Chantal Passamonte was at one time (and may still be) Warp's publicist, but has certainly come into her own as one of the label's most interesting artists as Mira Calix, celebrating and augmenting the advanced electronics that Warp has always championed.
This album sounds like it was snatched straight out of the late '90s. Textbook darktronica which is certainly pleasant enough, if somewhat faceless and uneven. The synth strings melodies on the 15th track "Shadenfreunde" sound as though they're being played through a factory pre-set patch, and being performed by a complete novice no less (or perhaps they were programmed quite messily)! As a result, the track comes off as clumsy... and the album as a whole? File under 'h' for Ho hum.
MPEG Download: "Shadenfreunde" [/audio/miracalixshaden.mp3]
Record number two from this Shadow Ring offshoot, and it's another strange sonic trip, the framework in some ways similar to the Shadow Ring, in that the songs here are droned out and drifty, with the occasional vocals delivered in a haunting deep spoken word (or occasionally a hushed female croon), but the sounds in CBTG are much more dreamy and drifty, still a bit twisted and atonal in places, but the record starts with a surprisingly lush and warm bit of almost new agey soundscapery, before slipping into a short stretch of kosmische synth shimmer, it's not until a few tracks in that things begin to darken, the sound turning a bit more grim, a gurgling electronic dronescape, rumbling beneath those aforementioned hauntingly intoned spoken vocals, the whole thing peppered with sci-fi squiggles and shards of synth buzz, the A side finishing off with a sonic bookend, a reprise of the opener, another bit of warm ambient swirl, which quickly gives way to a bit of hazy synth-folk drift, that sounds a bit like Fastest / Xynfonica, the sounds slightly atonal, the melodies subtly sour, which is balanced by the sweetly crooned female vox that hover ghostlike above.
The flipside flits restlessly from epic synth prog to murky droney creep, occasionally slipping into long sprawls of low end shimmer, laced with overlapping voices, and hazy washed out melodies, bits of skittery IDM electronics surfacing here and there, and still more hauntingly intoned vox, culminating in what has to be the strangest track on the record, the weirdly riffy, dirgey, droney closer, "Passage Of Arms", a muddy stretch of muted tinny riffage, like some sort of transistor radio alien doom, the vocals sung (at least compare to the rest of the record), and while this might be the most 'rock' thing CBTG have ever done, fear not, it's still appropriately weirdly twisted and woozily warped into the perfect coda for what was already and beautifully baffling collection of sound.
This is indeed a weird one, even from the already extra weird Shadow Ring camp. Call Back The Giants is the solo project of SR keyboardist Tim Goss, and on this, the debut lp from Goss and his CBTG, he weaves an ever shifting landscape of warped keyboard drones, twisted new age drift, fractured late night ambience, creepy processed vocals, and blissed out psychedelia.
Gloomy and otherworldly, some sort of soundtrack for another world, another time, another dimension, low tones wheeze and creep and slither, blossoming into Technicolor expanses of hazy, gauzy ambience, rife with fragmented melodies, slowed down voices, swirling FX and heart-of-the-sun kosmische solar shimmer.
The title track takes the retro futuristic sci-fi synthscapes of Zombi and Majeure and pulls them apart until they sound like a melting VHS tape of some seventies British science program, and of course, that's not counting the bizarre male and female vocals, both drawled and druggy, and distorted, mostly blotting out the sounds beneath them.
The rest of the record unfurls similarly, slipping from woozy, Dr. Who style synthscapery, all warbly and woozy, to hazy, almost shoegazy glitched out rainbowy shimmer, to murky underwater electronica, laced with sing songy synth pulses, to ominous electronic flecked faux string lofi MIDI sounding dirges, to 8 bit style primitive keyboard majesty, all of those various shades of fantastical whatthefuck, made even more twisted by the various vocals, mush mouthed mumble one second, deep moody croon the next, almost falsetto sounding warble the next, and eventually to that very recognizable Shadow Ring style spoken word.
Weird record for sure, but Shadow Ring fans will be in heaven, and folks who like tripped our electronic dronemusic and otherworldly new age avant ambience, or hell, just plain far out (but still mysterious and melodic) weirdness, then this is definitely worth checking out!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
From the same label that brought us that killer disc of mutated minimal techno sound design from Akkord, which we made our Record Of The Week back on list #442, comes the latest from Call Super, who apparently has a clutch of releases before this one, but Suzi Ecto is the first we're hearing, and we're digging it like crazy. Things start out pretty twisted, with a jagged stretch of creepy John Carpentery techno, very sinister and cinematic, the opening track sounding a bit like the main melody from the soundtrack to Phantasm (that's one Death Waltz should reissue!!) transformed into some avant electronica. Nothing else here is quite that noisy, but it remains plenty weird, the sound settling into something more stuttery and skittery, the fractured rhythms looped beneath blooping melodies and laser blast bleeps, the occasional jazzy shimmer, bleating trumpets, all sorta laid back and groovy, swirling and swoonsome, and that swirly swoon is all over the record, the various melodies and loops always woozy and warped and underwater sounding. At times it's like the record is melting and oozing from the speakers, at others, it's like listening to the record through speakers at the bottom of a swimming pool. That said, we're definitely reminded of the watery Detroit techno of Drexciya, somehow fused with the post Boards Of Canada, sepia toned electronica of recent aQ fave Dalhous.
The record continues to sprawl and drift, touching on moments of dubbed out house, trippy techno and electronic jazziness, churning mesmeric rhythms winding their way throughout, sometimes dense and tribal, busy and polyrhythmic, other times skeletal and spare and barely there, the beats surrounded by all manner of percussion, fractured melodies, constantly shifting textures, that watery vibe a constant presence, the sound seeming to get more murky and liquid as the record progresses, the record, and the listener, sinking ever deeper, culminating in the washed out, submerged dub of closer "Acephale 1", which is where we settle on the bottom of Call Super's sonic sea, staring up at the world, everything gorgeously distorted by bottomless blue depths, now above us...
Latest from this well-known French DJ. Jazzy, beat heavy mixology. Samples, scratches, live playing, guest vox...definitely more on the DJ Shadow side of things than the DJ Q-bert side (in the easy listenability vs. turntable acrobatics spectrum). Downtempo cinematic noir-ish hip hop grooves rub shoulders with more dance-floor oriented material.
Wah? We STILL have copies of this limited edition 2014 Record Store Day release lying around?? You mean we didn't sell out of this $15 reissue of this Dusseldorf new wave noise band's rare 1983 7" single yet? Well that's messed up, 'cause actually, import RSD price aside, it's pretty killer. Two tracks of beat-heavy art punk madness with aggro screaming echoing vox. Shocking. Actually we only have 2 copies left, so if you're looking for one, better grab it quick.
Why mess with a good thing? Seminal krautrockers Can are downright inspiring, apparently, and short of adding four-on-floor-beats to make an insta-dance track, you be hardpressed to ruin a Can song. 15 classic tracks are remixed by the likes of Brian Eno, Sonic Youth, The Orb, A Guy Called Gerald, Pete Shelley, U.N.K.L.E., Bruce Gilbert and others. Some drum'n'bass, some weirdo techno noodling, and more than a few quite interesting interpretations. Double cd for the price of one.
Plux Quba is a record that after the nearly 30 years of its existence remains impossible to categorize. It's almost as if it was an alien broadcast beamed in from another planet. Little is known about its creator, Nuno Canavarro, outside of his native Portugal, and its discovery is so unbelievably legendary and riddled with hearsay that it's easy to dismiss this as a probable hoax.
Recorded in 1988 and released on a private label, it was believed to be discovered in 1991 by Jim O'Rourke while traveling through Europe with Jan St. Werner (Microstoria, Mouse On Mars) and Carsten Schulz (C-Shultz and Hajsch). Liking what he heard, Rourke eventually started a label call Moikai in 1998 and the first release was Plux Quba remastered by Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral. That the sounds contained on Plux Quba would go on to heavily influence the sound of all three artists' later output (not to mention bearing a strong sonic resemblance to Aphex Twin's early ambient pieces, Boards of Canada's nostalgic filmstrip melodies, Prefuse 73's glitch-hop, and Christian Fennesz's sublime Endless Summer) is a bizarre case of cosmic synchronicity. Rumors that this was an elaborate prank by the three electronic artists have since been quelled by enough evidence of Canavarro's existence as an architectural student, a member of semi-popular Portuguese new wave bands, and his subsequent compositional work in Portuguese cinema.
Indeed, the 15 tracks (8 of which are untitled - many clock in just over a minute) of Plux Quba can be seen as a bridge between the electro-acoustic computer-processing works of Robert Ashley (1979's Automatic Writing) and David Behrman (1984's Leapday Night) on the Lovely music label, and the advent of laptop-based electronica of the nineties. Yet Plux Quba seems less aware than that, as if created in a total vacuum. Its mystery remains one of its key attractions.
I (Scott) was turned on to this by friend and Alps band-mate Jefre Cantu-Ledesma in the nineties when he dubbed it to cassette for me, after raving about it endlessly. At first, I didn't understand the appeal. It doesn't endear itself to the listener right away. Each track is its own micro-universe of texture and mood. The first bursts of high piercing squelches, random cluster tones, bell drones and squeals, come off as abrasive and abstract, appear than disappear. Its soft-volume minimal experiments are heightened by pauses of pregnant silence that are not easy on casual listeners. It's not until about five short tracks in that processed disembodied voices, bird-like chirps and chord washes begin to emote a tangible melancholy melody, and that's when Plux Quba begins to work its magic. It took so many concentrated listens to that tape before I was finally under its spell.
Made with electronics, melodica, and pre-recorded tapes of acoustic instruments such as harp, flute, bells, marimbas, organ, an out of tune toy piano, and accordion, the overall sound is augmented by whispered transmitted voices, abstracted squeals, glitchy computerized electronics, toy instruments, crying children, animal noises, Conet Project style shortwave babble, and off-kilter hand percussion. It's almost as if a computer was fed some primitive bedroom recordings performed by children and asked to mimic the results. The cover art with its childlike drawing and strange font layouts doesn't offer any clues either, unless one is versed in Portuguese perhaps. But even then, Plux Quba seems to be mining a territory where language is useless as an orienting factor, but trades on a highly prevalent universality of emotion. It remains a singular and beguiling artifact that won't appeal to everybody, but offers massive rewards to the curious, adventurous and patient.
Magic Radios opens with a gathering of electronics that buzz and crackle over the ebb and flow of a ghostly drone, but swiftly moves into the realm of warm horns and shufflin' drums ("3000 Miles"), then continues to melt into a range of other sonic terrains -- some more successfully than others. There's the beautiful, serene, acoustic song "Take My Light" rich with strings and almost choral voices, followed by a soothing, swaying downtempo track, then an exotica-tinged spacy number "Flyaway" with murmured vocals that fans of Air might find rather fetching. Overall, a somber, glimmering journey. Quite nice.
Culture of Pink is the second full length from Cankun, aka Vincent Caylet. He's a studio mad scientist who has whipped up a warm, woozy, otherworldly post punk sound here, that plays as if it really could be some lost eighties lp beamed here directly from another decade, a sound that on the surface wouldn't be out of place on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones. It definitely seems to be channeling another era, the guitar chime and soar and swoon, most definitely reminding us of the Durutti Column, but here filtered through an aesthetic much closer to say someone like James Ferraro, and the percolating rhythms a cascade of tangled drum machines, that almost sounds like a more lo-fi home brewed Soft Moon, but as the tracks play, they seem to unravel, just a bit, seeming to reveal the strange sonic machinations lurking beneath. The opener "Agave Sticks" is all low slung bass groove, chiming distorted guitar buzz, wreathed in sheet of chordal thrum, and driven by buzzing rock riffs in the background, the rhythms cranked up so it almost sounds like machines creating this alien post punk, and near the end of the song, those rhythms are pushed to the fore, and grow more erratic and chaotic, and soon they're grinding along through billowing clouds of guitar shimmer, at once, tripped out and off kilter, but also dreamy and weirdly tranquil.
It definitely sets the stage perfectly for the rest of the record, which unfurls as a collection of woozy, rhythmic, almost new wave soundscapes, of overlapping loops, sampled horn blurts, swirls of reverbed synths, sounds chopped up and reassembled into weirdly rhythmic stutters, many of the songs building to almost tropical blowouts, like multiple Martin Denny records spinning simultaneously with someone like Philip Jeck at the controls, while others lay down skeletal robotic drum machines, and wrap them in spidery minor key melodies, and deep sinewy bass slither. There's even vocals here and there, doused in echo and reverb, deep and dramatic, buried way down in the mix, giving those tracks even more of a gloom pop electro goth feel. But there's also plenty of lush ambience, long stretches of collaged sound, droned and whirs, breakbeats, twangy guitars, on tracks like "Acinom" or "Save My Day" it almost sounds like Dirty Beaches by way of DJ Shadow, while others get fully dubbed out, upstroke guitars, faux horns, even almost toasting-like vox, but even there, the sounds are warped and woozy, low fidelity and fantastically and dreamily murky, reminding us of an even more tweaked and drugged out Sun Araw maybe. And so it goes for the record of the record, a hazy, drowsy sprawl of tripped out, darky dubby, rhythmically off kilter, melancholic, new wave flecked, FX heavy psychedelic tropical dream-murk weirdness that we are digging BIG TIME.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
We were only able to get ten of these and odds are we won't be able to get more, so we'll keep this brief. Needless to say, you might want to grab one of these before they're gone, cuz the A side Finds Cantu-Ledesma unfurling a gorgeous slab of Lovesliescrushing style prismatic dreampop shimmer, skeletal rhythms suspended in crystalline fields of bleary sundappled rainbow synth swaddled guitartroniks, thick swaths of chordal thrum, whirls lazily over a warm billowy background of keening melodies and abstract ethereal ambience. Distorted and dreamily blown out, noisy, but a sort of gauzy soft focus noisiness that makes it sound like the sounds are melting into deliriously colorful fractals before your very ears. Some heady sonic confection for sure, and miles removed from the minimal contemplation of many of Cantu-Ledesma's other releases.
The flipside merges the two, the more subdued ambience of earlier works with the above mentioned blissed out 4AD blur/blear/bliss, the resulting track is a dark, Twin Peaks like drift, all lush soft swirls, fractured dubbed out rhythms, hazy sonic smears, all druggy and droney, a lovely lysergic comedown from the A side's more effervescent sonic swirl.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! These are very likely the only copies we'll ever get, includes a printed insert, and comes housed in a swank, thick, full color sleeve.
Halation is the debut release from Japanese dronologist Hiroshi Tanaka, aka Capricornus, and is two tracks and 41 minutes of gorgeously minimal, hazy, gauzy, ethereal, free floating, hushed ambient drift. Long tones are layered into gently undulating sonic swells woven into a blurred, meditative new age, melodies playing out over minutes instead of seconds, the overtones, creating subtly kaleidoscopic shades amidst the glacially unfolding drowsy tranquility, occasionally what sounds like guitars surface, but all the edges are worn away, transforming the chordal steel string whir into yet another layer of soft sound. The second track is a bit more moody, slightly darker, the sounds interacting similarly, muted and murmuring, drifting dreamily, but the tones have a melancholic cast, as if clouds had drifted over the opening track, still warm and lush and dreamlike, but more rainy day than sun dappled summer afternoon. Both equally lovely, a fantastic debut of washed out ambient dreamdronedrift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Feeling Strange is a fluid mixed set from Parisian minimalist proponent Jennifer Cardini. Yes, the minimalist techno gestures abound, with plenty of bleeps, bloops, and acid squiggles grafted onto that insistent technotic pulse; but Ms. Cardini doesn't just adhere to the Detroit / Berlin axis of electronica with some very nice transitions into some Moroder-esque arpeggiating disco and leftfield electro-pop. Static, Maurizio, The Hacker, Reinhard Voigt, Apparat, and Luisine are but a few of the selections. Adorned with the Kompakt seal of approval.
While V/VM has been unrelentingly releasing the dumbest, least funny jokes in electronica, the arrival of an album from The Caretaker is a welcome respite. This project -- which may or may not have anything to do with the members of V/VM -- has been the ONLY listenable thing released on the V/VM label since day 1! Like the aptly named debut "Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom," The Caretaker's "A Stairway To The Stars" digitally manipulates 1930's ballroom waltzes into occasionally dreamy, occasionally creepy atmospheres that blur the edges of the original vinyl tracks into somnambulant dronings. Aesthetically speaking, the only connection between V/VM and The Caretaker is found in the limited palette of effects cranked all the way up. While V/VM would use just a ring modulator on a Lionel Richie song for a really boring piece of post-irony, The Caretaker's overblown use of cathedral reverb turns those waltzes into something much closer to Troum. That said, there are a couple of tracks in which the ring modulator warbles far too often. Nevertheless, this is album that will surely invoke references to those eerie ballroom scenes from "The Shining."
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Now available on cd, record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Repressed and back in print.
Record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
One of Wire magazine's records of 2008, the Caretaker's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases was in fact, when we finally got to hear it, incredible. Gorgeous, hazy, mysterious, destined to be one of OUR favorites as well. Unfortunately, when we tried to order it, intending to feature it prominently on the list, we discovered that it was in fact so limited that it was already out of print, not to be repressed. Argghhh.
Thankfully, the vinyl version showed up recently, so we grabbed as many as we could, so we could shower it with the praise it most definitely deserves. CD only folks are shit out of luck, but for now (and we mean NOW, these are crazy limited too) we have the vinyl, so grab one before they disappear.
The Caretaker has two modes, slow shimmery gauzy ambience, and slowed down warped and blurred big band and jazz. Often combing the two into some sort of otherworldly slow motion spectral dream jazz. We've been joking that the Caretaker is sort of like the DJ Screw of the avant underground, seeing as he takes scratchy old jazz records and reworks them Philip Jeck style into, woozy buried drifts of jazz shadows and haunting otherworldly vocals. Most of the jazzier tracks, sound like the soundtrack to some super creepy dream sequence, a la the Shining, like when Nicholson finds himself in that bar filled with ghosts, you can almost imagine, a dusty old saloon, broken mirrors, cigarette burned tables, sawdust floors, a lone figure sitting alone, hunched over in a dark corner, while all around him, nearly transparent figures move about as if still alive, a ballet of phantom familiarity, spirits unaware that they've moved on, going on with the machinations of daily life, their essence flickery and indistinct, like an old filmstrip. And a filmstrip soundtrack is exactly what the music of the Caretaker evokes, warm, effusive, burnished, old timey, antiquated, the sounds are dark and woozy and and bleed together, blurring into fuzzy stretches of lost memory, of suspended time. The music here is the sound of faded old photographs, of old super 8 movies projected on a wall in a dark and dusty old room, of abandoned skating rinks, of boarded up windows, of black clouds filling a slate grey sky, of life slowing to a crawl, before ven more slowly fading away. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Caretaker spins really old vinyl for the most part much slower than intended and affects the lugubrious pace with assorted warbly effects. This collage of slo-mo waltzes and antique crackles is punctuated by a spartan use of distorto-breakbeat-crunch. Released on V/VM's label and certainly follows the V/VM - Speedranch - Janski Noise aethetic of neo-dada electronica, yet presented with a very sad overtone. In the end this could easily be some gossamer soundtrack to a deep sea nature show or an alternate score to the ballroom scenes in "The Shining".
Holy cow, this is a weird one. Rock fans may recognize the name Tony Carey, knowing that he was of course the keyboard player in Rainbow (playing alongside Ronnie James Dio and Richie Blackmore!), but then those same folks might find themselves wondering what the heck he's doing on Medical Records, who specializes in new wave / electro pop reissues. Well it seems that after Rainbow, Carey did indeed have a bunch of solo records that did quite well, but in the late seventies, he took up a residence in Germany, and began to work on mastering all sorts of instruments and studio gear, and writing a ton of songs, some of which would eventually end up on these records. Influenced by what he called "Euro-electronica", Carey's version of that sound is equal parts swirling kosmische synthscapes, Italo-disco, proto-techno, and yeah, a little eighties style electro pop.
This two lp collection gathers up two essential and long sought after Carey rarities, Explorer and Yellow Power, Explorer might be the more essential of the two, if just for the opening track "Enjaw J", which is such an amazing song, from its pulsing synth swirl open, a cascade of dizzying melodies, leads into a darkly dramatic groove, with a killer hook, surprisingly melancholic, the song stretching out, and letting the drum machine, and pulsating synths drive this electro-kraut workout, peppered part way through with a strange noisy swell and a splatter of abstract percussion. You'll find this one stuck in your head after one listen guaranteed. The rest of the record is pretty great too, but definitely leans more toward an eighties electro-pop. "Transit To Nowhere" almost sounds like an alternate version of the Sparks' "Cool Places", while "No.8" is a strange abstract slab of minimal electro-dub, and "Queen Of Scots" sounds a bit like A-Ha, a moody and dramatic, with a cool cascading main melody that again, like the opener is crazy catchy. There's definitely a cheesy element to these songs and sounds, but it's kind of what makes them so cool, that and realizing this guy once rocked out in Rainbow!
The other record, Yellow Power, is a sort of companion to Explorer, and shares much of the same sonic palette, but seems a it more thematically linked, to the somewhat problematic title, when you realize some of the song titles are "Peking Duck", "Radio Tokyo" and "Hai Samurai", that one complete with some weird processed vox singing "HAI!"
There are some of the same tracks on both records, it has been theorized that one was demos for the other, but the version are different enough the make it worth it. Yellow Power definitely features more vocals overall, whispers here and there, wailing operatic female vox in the background, and it's interesting to hear some of the instrumental tracks on Explorer with vocals. There seems to be more guitar too, and more studio fuckery, they're both weird, each one weird in a slightly different way. We're digging this a LOT, and we should say, that of all the Medical releases we've reviewed, this is the one our distributor excitedly insisted we get a bunch of cuz it's so weird, and so good, and we most definitely agree.
Super swank packaging, the records pressed on thick 160 gram colored vinyl, one record green, the other blue, housed in a super thick full color gatefold sleeve, limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered. Includes a bonus insert with a retrospective and interview.
It's been 4 years since Dan Snaith's last record under the Caribou moniker, though he took a detour to record a techno-oriented album under a new moniker Daphni in 2012. Here on Our Love, he returns to form melding the Arthur Russell-ish dance floor excursions from his last outing, Swim, with some of the hazy pop bliss of older efforts Andorra and Milk of Human Kindness, into a slow disco candyland of blissfully moving synthforms, low-key soulful vocals and ear-wormy edits. Our Love may be his most fully realized record, its nuanced sound more polished and less experimentally pulled together from various approaches than previous efforts, marked by a noticeable restraint that keeps the tracks lean, but never lacking. In fact, it's got plenty of dynamic shifting movement and bounce, while retaining a deep emotional core in the songwriting. Admittedly, it took us awhile to get into this, mainly because we weren't sure that its attention to surface detail would penetrate deeper. But once we did we haven't stopped playing it.
The Torontonian artist Dan Snaith who now goes by the professional moniker Caribou used to prefer to be addressed by the name of a Canadian prairie province. Minor legal battles ensued with the elder musical artist Handsome Dick Manitoba claiming the name, and the rest is history. While Snaith was Manitoba, he released two terrific albums 2003's Up In Flames and 2001's Start Breaking My Heart which have now been reissued under his 'new' name, each with a bonus disc packed with extra material. Snaith has amassed quite an impressive body of work to date culminating in last year's very warmly received The Milk Of Human Kindness. Draws comparisons to fellow electronic popsters such as Jimmy Tamborello's select projects (Dntel, James Figurine, Postal Service) and the whole Morr Music roster (LaliPuna, Isan, Styrofoam), but incorporates a broader palette of more defined styles and influences. Swirling dreaminess occasionally drifting into jazzy and shoegazer territory. Always a pleasure!
