After the gorgeously organic and delicately melodic experimentalism of the last few Coh releases, this decidedly monochromatic, almost straight techno 12" came as a bit of a surprise. That said, this is a pretty engaging platter of head nodding electronic bliss. Side one is a cold and minimal digital glitchscape, with clipped pulses, humming static, squeaking creaking digital errata, and cyclical muted minor key melodies that slowly build in intensity. Halfway through the side, the track seemingly repeats, this time with a little extra dynamic flair, more grit and a more solid throb, before dissipating into a serene wash of isolated notes, sounding a bit like a slowed down thumb piano. Quite beautiful. The second side starts off with a little bit of classic Kraftwerk major key melodic bounce, but quickly settles into similarly spaced out, hypno-throb territory. Imagine Plastikman on speed, or 4 on the floor techno played by Pole, or Gas trying to do 'real' dance music. Strangely hypnotic and pretty great.
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A lot more action packed and a bit more accessible than most Noton / Rastermusic releases (like Noto, Miko Vainio, Kim Cascone, and Signal) but still just as minimal as fuck in places. After a minute of ear shredding schreech and a few downright 'poppy' moments, the record settles down into looped out bliss. Beeps, clicks and stuttering tones coalesce into a soothing minimal whole. An exceptional record for fans of Oval.
COH, aka Ivan Pavlov, has been a long time favorite, taking that click and beep and buzz we love so much, that austere clipped electronic minimalism, and somehow infusing it with melody, and emotion, and while we love Pavlov's contemporaries, that might just be what makes the music of COH sound so special to us. And as if we weren't already excited about a new COH record anyway, IIron is Pavlov's 'metal record', a continuation of 2000's Iron, which was ostensibly his rock record (thus the title IIron should be read as Iron with the Roman numeral two replacing the 'I', as in part two), and much like other COH records, his take on minimal electronica bears little resemblance to his peers, especially here, taking acoustic guitars, chugging metal guitars, skittery electro rhythms, synth new wave, droned out low end crush and nineties style electronic industrial, and tangling it all up into some weird electro-avant-metal hybrid, that varies wildly from track to track, but manages to weave them all together into a somewhat cohesive whole.
Besides the usual minimal buzz and click programming and electronic beat crafting, Pavlov incorporates both recent guitar recordings as well as various guitar recordings made back in the eighties during Soviet era Russia, when even listening to metal music, let alone crating it, was expressly forbidden, Which also adds to the tension and emotional resonance of these tracks, which vary from propulsive and electro, to blackened and sludgey, to chuggy and noisy. The opener "Red Square" begins with a bit of delicate fingerpicked steel string guitar, wreathed in record crackle, which is soon overtaken by some pulsing industrial pulse and pound, a little Skinny Puppy, a little Ministry, but a bit more skeletal and cinematic, the crunchy distorted guitar, chopped up and spaced out into a weird sort of rock riff chug, all wrapped around a seriously creepy bit of soundtracky ambience, and a tangle of melodies that sounds almost like a electro-metal version of gypsy folk.
"War End War" is where the record first gets truly metal, after some deep barely audible subsonic rumbles, the low end roils and churns, a Tim Hecker-ish bit of blurred bassy melody, all hazy and indistinct, which builds and builds until a lurching lumbering doom-ic riffscape stumbles from the murk, wreathed in swirls of glitched out electronics and strange spacey FX, the sound crusty, and crunchy, distorted and crumbling, all wound around a big thick metallic riff just chugging away, the sound gradually smoothing out, until the song has returned to the murky muddy thrum that started things off, this time laced with a simple guitar melodies, and distant little curlicues of effects, all beneath a patina of crumbling gauze, before that riff returns, only this time to get all glitched up like a super scratchy skipping record, and then to get fused with some pulsing trancey electronica, the result a buzzy, metallic bit of doomy abstract industrial electronica.
The metal element is not so pronounced on some of the other tracks, or at least not obviously so, "Soii Noir" is a super minimal bit of pulsing electro, spare and spacious, sounding almost like a game of Pong, until another crunchy, lo-fi distorted riff enters the picture, but like before, it's all twisted up and distorted, wreathed in crackle and crumbling buzz, and molded into something distinctly UNmetal, but still heavy and riffy, where as "Slowup (Quadrate Fur Jah)" begins like some old demo tape of garage band riffery, only to become something much more playful and pulsing, like Neu! if they had drafted a metal guitarist to join, the same sort of sun dappled krautrocky drift, albeit with that one extra six stringed element.
"Fist Of Glory" distorts the guitars even further, turning a buzzy lo-fi riff into a layered bit of glitched out textural ambience, cutting out, skittering and skipping, clipped and looped, like some decaying reel to reel of plunderphonic metal, dizzying and abstract, but in its own way strangely rhythmic and hypnotic.
"All Lights Are Fire" is super spare and skeletal, the guitars muted and muddy, the electronics glitchy and squiggly, the sound somewhere between the electro dub of Pole and the krautrock of Can or Neu!, motorik, meditative, hypnotic, but as the track progresses, the guitars grow more buzzy and insistent, the production more noisy and distorted, the arrangement more chaotic.
Finally, IIron finishes off with "Satsugaii", which starts out all minimal murk, spare electronic pulses, and deep low end thrum, before some seriously Shellac-y noise rock guitars come in, which are mirrored by some pulsing synths, creating a weird bit of metallic electro-noise-rock, or something, whatever it is, it's like the perfect middle ground between old school krautrock, modern Carpenter / Goblin style cinematic electro-wave, nineties industrial and noise rock, especially with the addition of wild squalls of psychedelic guitar tangle, all over thick pounding pusling electronics and crunchy clipped riffage, heavy and heady, eventually slipping right back into that opening bit of minimal electronica, and finishing off with some hushed steel string guitar, and one final blast of psychguitar skree.
Awesome stuff for sure. And quite possibly one of our favorite COH records yet, which we should have assumed, considering the record bears the irrefutable legend: "HAIL TO WORLD PEACE AND DEATH TO FALSE METAL!"
Swank gatefold sleeve for the double vinyl, the cd version in a nice digipack, with art and design by Stephen O'Malley.
Raster-Noton contributor Coh (aka Ivan Pavlov) has dedicated his Wavetrap album "Iron" to heavy metal fans all over the world and has even given some of the tracks metal puns for titles ('For Whom The Dell Falls' and 'Rubbing Free' for example). Of all of the electron modulators populating the Raster-Noton roster, Coh has always had the keenest pop sensibility, often infusing his near catchy melodies with static-laden feedback bursts and pure sinewaves. "Iron" is Coh's most aggressive recording to date, filled with staticky melodies that soften (only a little) his morass of digital black box effects and synthetic noise. While you'd be hard pressed to hear anything definitively metal on this record (i.e. guitar solos, double bass-kick blastbeats, wailing vocalizations, Satan), the massive ebb and flow of the music takes its starting point from the epic heaviosity of metal and turns it into something uniquely Coh. Recommended!
"Love Uncut" is the newest EP from Russian electron engineer Coh and it features vocal contributions from various members of Coil. More so than any of the other Raster-Noton artists, Coh is not afraid of the power of the pop song, turning Pan Sonic minimalist
According to Raster-Noton who first released this album back in 1999, "Mask Of Birth" was the debut recording for Coh, the Russian born programmer Ivan Pavlov. Originally, this was a vinyl only release published by Raster-Noton, who made a point of stating that they had a difficult time cutting the frequencies of these recordings onto wax. A mere three years later, Mego has taken up the task of re-issuing this album on CD, a medium more appropriate for dynamic frequencies. Despite his origins with Raster's pristine electronics, Coh has continued to present himself as a post-techno reincarnation of the bleak industrial arpeggiations from the early-'80s, sharing the common urgency of early Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Fad Gadget, Konstruktivitis, Skinny Puppy and the like. He's just been using much more high tech gear than abused samplers and overblown drum machines. After his recent collaborations with Coil on the "Love Uncut" EP, the revisitation to his first productions draws the same conclusion of his historical citations. The darkened loops, tremolo vibrations, and static pulsations have similar tonalities to his peers on Raster (Noto, Mika Vainio, and Komet), but the structure of the his music is fixed back in time on those aforementioned references. As many of those bands have been forgotten, marginalized, or dismissed, Coh's electronica revisionism is certainly welcome!
The glitchy, streaming rhythms from Russian electronic musician Ivan Pavlov (aka Coh) have always been difficult for us to write about because they are so immediate and just simply work so well. Yeah, our purple prose benefits from the context of elfin types scurrying around the forest with contact mics and then overlaying those sounds with some fucking heavy doom riffs that aim to crack the skull of Odin; so when a prolific technician like Pavlov constantly churns out an extremely consistent body of work we can be at a loss for words. Don't dismay, we'll do our best to blather on about this brilliant 24 minute EP. Over the past six or seven years, Pavlov has released tons of recordings for heavy-weight avant electronica labels such as Mego, Raster-Noton, and Eskaton (one of the labels run by Coil); and many of these recordings do essentially the same thing: generate tense yet hypnotic electronic pieces which smartly synthesize a number of electronica references. There's the futuristic Moroder arpeggiations, the erratic digital pixel smears of Stilluppsteypa's glitch-n-drone, the extravagant audio alchemy worthy of comparisons to the best Coil recordings, and the release-and-stop dynamics borrowed from the finest Model 500 techno. Given how druggy these repetitive algorithms are, it's no wonder that the sidereal psychonauts Coil were so taken by Pavlov's work. Like pretty much everything he touches, Patherns is extraordinary.
As we've mentioned in the past, the music of Coh, aka Ivan Pavlov, is quite difficult to describe. Which is probably why he tends to be one of our favorites of the many modern electronic minimalists. He releases records on Raster-Noton, yet his sound manages to both embrace R-N's signature minimal glitch and click, while at the same time subverting it, creating something simultaneously warm and familiar, alien and totally original. Every record is thematically and sonically unique, whether he's collaborating with other musicians, or simply creating a song suite based on some random idea, even a whim, once it works its way through Pavlov's brain into the computer onto disc and into our stereo, the resulting sound is more often then not transcendent, minimal in sound sure, but with maximum impact, his music emotional and personal where others creating similar sounds are cold and clinical.
For Strings, Pavlov has decided to take the sounds of certain stringed instruments, which played some part in his musical upbringing, and in some way to enrich and expand those sounds, to twist and transform, allowing the instruments to be recognizable, and sound like they sound, but to create a whole new setting for those instruments. The focus here is on the 4 instruments that Pavlov played throughout his life: piano, guitar, saz and oud.
The opener is all piano, and sounds the most at home on Raster-Noton, simple melancholy melodies are suspended in smeared shimmers of reverb, the notes stretching, stuttering, blurring into washed out whirs of dreamy chords and long drawn out tones. Sounds bent and stretched, layered and allowed to hover in long expanses of distant high end flutter. Hushed and gorgeous, the digital manipulation deftly applied so as not to distract from the gorgeous hushed drift. Really quite lovely. The piano continues on into the second track, where the sounds are much more manipulated, looped and layered, but this time into a swirl of Melnyk-like flurries, which are augmented by a stuttery techno like pulse, the whole thing skittery and hypnotic, peppered with streaks of buzzy squelch, until the final few minutes when the beat drops out and the various notes are allowed to swirl like sonic snowflakes.
The next few tracks are like a suite, beginning with what is either a saz or a lute (sorry we can't tell for sure), locked into s super rhythmic strum, and processed into a propulsive minimal almost-techno, which is soon wrapped in thick sheets of low end buzz and glitch, almost synthy sounding fuzz, eventually building to an almost metal riff, all blown out and wreathed in crumbling distorted buzz, finally erupting into a confusional tangle of crunchy riff, processed hum and rumble, and Middle Eastern sounding melodies. This leads directly into a lumbering doomy digitized metal workout, the main riff grinding its way through clouds of swirling effects and smears of squelch and buzz, distant soaring sort-of-strings, all very dramatic, until the guitars fade, leaving just a skeletal rhythm, and super dramatic slow burning electronic swell and skitter.
The next track is all Middle Eastern melody, laced with bits of glitch, a muted electronic throb, a bit like a slightly more techno Muslimgauze, but as the track develops, the sound becomes more digital, the original melody chopped up and wrapped around a propulsive beat before fading out into a shimmer of pixilated piano, which gives way to the record closer, beginning again, with moody, simply strummed strings, before being swallowed whole by a massive buzzing electronic drone, gorgeous and layered and so thick, while the strings below continue to unfurl. The track gets all old school techno briefly, skittery and stuttery, clipped notes, until again, near the end, that howling buzz drenched drone returns, this time all chopped up and even more corrosive and blown out.
It sounds all over the map, and it is, but all the tracks, as disparate sounding as they are, slip in and out of each other so perfectly, a definitely sonic suite, with more in common than just the stringed source material. The second disc features a single 17 minute track, that starts out sounding like Machinefabriek, all dark bell like tones and deep blackened shimmers, soft whirs, stretched out almost-melodies, some strings do pop up part way through, sounding again quite Middle Eastern, and again wreathed in a brittle techno stutter, before a long drawn out stretch of near silence, and a brief coda of soft strings over distant drone. So awesome. Maybe the best thing we've heard from Coh, which is saying a whole lot.
And the packaging. Holy moly! Super elaborate, die cut fold out multi panel printed sleeve, the cds held in place by various slots and slits, revealing the curved silver edges of the discs as part of the design!
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Coh's take on minimalist electronica isn't all that different from his Raster / Noton labelmates (Noto, Komet, and the 20' to 2000 artists) with a pure tone bliss borrowing heavily from neo academic Germanic techno, but Coh has always had a thing for pop music. And with vocal assistance from Annie Anxiety (ex-Crass) and Coil's Sleazy & Balance, Coh's electronic modulations get even closer to a new form of twisted avant-pop.
Never heard of Charles Cohen? Neither had we. Which is really not surprising, considering this composer and master of the Buchla Music Easel synthesizer (he's one of the few Buchla masters in the world), managed to remain largely unknown outside of Philadelphia, where he spent the late seventies and eighties composing for dance performances and art installations, famously refusing to record, concerned with the 'ephemerality' of his music, and being somewhat of a recluse outside of his music making. But oh the music he made! In a world and time where pretty much any unheard record is considered reissue-able, very little of it truly is, and yet Cohen's music is so well deserving of a wider audience, especially considering how sonically prescient his music truly was.
A mix of musique concrete, kosmische new age, electronic krautrock, alien exotica and layered dronemusic, the sounds collected here are at once all over the map and unpredictable, but also all somehow also sonically linked. It's impossible to describe two discs' worth of Cohen's music in shorthand, but too daunting two go through each of the 22 tracks, one by one, but imagine, a fluid soundscape in constant flux: murky, lo-fi flurries of percussion wreathed in swirling electronics, almost like some alien gamelan - weird abstract dub, all glitchy and spaced out, almost industrial, but also sort of dreamy and ambient - very Kraftwerk sounding propulsive electro grooves, squelchy and shimmery, but hazy and psychedelically cosmic - Les Baxter like electro-exotica, maybe as envisioned by Nurse With Wound, and that's just the first four tracks. From there on out, it just gets cooler and weirder, more mysterious and even more abstractly beautiful.
"Sonomama" sounds almost like Asian folk music, again as re-envisioned by someone like the Residents, especially the second half when the sounds become more frantic and chaotic. Some tracks almost sound like eighties Carpenter soundtracks, check out the "Velcro Dance", which totally sounds like it could be playing as the credits roll on some old VHS tape, but then seconds later, there's the darkly delicate "Sunrise Women-Men", which almost sounds like Morricone, a wistful, cinematic sprawl, laced with muted melody and occasional percussion, before transforming surprisingly into something way more futuristic! At this point, we essentially are going track by track through the whole collection, but it's hard not to. Every track here is a mysterious gem, sonic surprises lurk around every corner, some short bursts, others, long, slow building epics, some playful and almost goofy, others somber and haunting, even sinister, but again, every second of sound here is utterly stunning.
There's tons more info in the liner notes, lots of rare photos and different writers and fellow composers offering their impressions of Cohen and his music, much of it truly fascinating, but like all great music, even knowing nothing about its provenance, doesn't take away from the magic and power of the sounds here. A truly fantastic discovery, and no doubt a contender for reissue of the year!
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The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often
During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit.
"Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler.
This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.
We mentioned that Cold Cave threw us for a loop with all of the roccoco flourishes that adorned the gloomy synth-pop of their 2011 album Cherish The Light Years. Since then, Cold Cave has steadily released a handful of singles through their own Heartworm imprint, many of which have disappeared almost as soon as they were released. We might have had one or two of those singles at one time or another, but we were never able to get enough stock to list any one of those. Thankfully, Wes Eisold, the man behind Cold Cave, has compiled all of those singles, recorded from 2011 to 2014, on to this single disc right here. These singles represent the simpler, skeletal sound of Cold Cave that struck our fancy way back when. A drum machine, a step sequenced melody, an icy yet harmonic counterpoint, and Eisold's deep monotone croon. That's pretty much the successful formula for a great Cold Cave song, and Eisold pretty much sticks to this strategy. The one notable exception is the Jesus & Mary Chain distorto-crush electronics of the Oceans With No End single. The other singles that round out the compilation include A Little Death To Laugh, Black Boots, God Made The World, and a handful of digital only cuts.
You wonder about a vinyl version? The answer now is a resounding maybe...
In listening to the few releases from Cold Cave (to date, just this 12" and the "Painted Nails" 7" on Hospital), we can easily see Cold Cave becoming huge. Maybe not as megalomaniacally huge as Coldplay or U2; but maybe there's a Wire or XLR8R cover for Cold Cave to grace sometime in the future. The Trees Grew Emotions And Died predated the heavily acclaimed Painted Nails single; and like that single, this gem of crunched noise mingling with retro-garde synth pop has gone in and out of print several times. It's still a limited pressing of 500 copies, so be forewarned!
Cold Cave is the work of one Wes Eisold, who fronted a couple of East Coast hardcore bands before starting a collection of thrift store samplers and synthesizers. In wiring all of these half-functioning devices through various effects and distortion pedals, he's arrived at an abrasive minimal wave sound that has two feet firmly planted in the worlds of New Order and Wolf Eyes. Had Eisold added a guitar into the mix, Cold Cave might have ended up not all that far from those brilliant bliss pop mutations from Woodsist (i.e. Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Wavves, etc.), but he's admitted that part of his frustration with hardcore was over his two-decade losing battle in learning the guitar. So, the synthesizer is the instrument of choice for Cold Cave. This three track EP showcases his pop genius with minor key melodies bobbing along insistent drum machines and sinister atmospheres. "Heaven's Gate" and "Our Tears Help The Flowers Grow" start with the minor-key synth melodies which buttress Depeche Mode's Violator and The Cure's Faith, with megaphone distortion crackling the detached male / female vocals. The title track is considerably up-tempo and up-beat with a bouncy melody that WILL get stuck in your head in all the right ways, like those incredible singles which made their way onto the first Adult. album. Very highly recommended!
In 1996, Coldcut, the UK duo of Jonathon More and Matt Black, ex-radio djs turned freestyle mixers / producers / remixers, released an album called Journeys By DJ, and it has finally been reissued: a 70-minute disc that has many times been called the best mix album of all time. Well... it's pretty inspired and great, that's for sure. Throwing in everything from Mantronix to Photek to Jhelisa, Red Snapper, Harold Budd, Jello Biafra, Junior Reid, and a lot more, Coldcut seamlessly connects everything using a variety or breakbeat tricks, jungle beats, vocal snippets, atomospheric bits. Lesser DJs (I guess that would be everyone else) oughta listen and learn. Pretty great.
As if the funkjazztickle tricknology of sampledelia by Ninjatune's scratchtastic duo weren't enough, there's another cd-ROM of Coldcut at play here. The lp version doesn't include this, but the gatefold cover art is supercool.
A classic old Coldcut track gets the remix treatment by John McEntire (Tortoise), Kid Koala, Q-Bert, T-Power, and Kid Teeba, as well as Coldcut themselves. This is the cd version of two 12" releases, and you get a CD-Rom Quicktime video as a bonus track.
For fans of Coldcut (duh!), Primal Scream, Massive Attack, and those early '90s heady housey club allniters. Coldcut's latest album offers an eclectic selection of tracks that range from funky Euro hiphop ("Everything Is Under Control") to ultra smooth Seal-ish AOR soul ("Walk A Mile In My Shoes" with Robert Owens on vocals) to Tear Garden-esque richly rhythmic, dub-infused looming atmospherics ("Boogieman"). Actually Sound Mirrors quite effectively reflects the incredible breadth of this duo's stylistic pursuits and capabilities over the years.
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Golden Morning Breaks is the second album from Parisian electronic-folk abstractionist Colleen (alias Ms. Ceclie Schott). Her first record -- Everyone Alive Wants Answers -- made use of a plethora of keyboards, music boxes, glockenspiels and guitars, astounding many a listener with her playful if occasionally dark constructions of post-Harold Budd / Brian Eno ambience. Golden Morning Breaks picks up where that earlier album left off with gentle music box-y electronica that depending on your state of mind can be thought of as light'n'summery or creepily unsettling a la '70s Italian horror movie soundtracks. Regardless, this is lovely stuff.
With each subsequent release, Colleen (aka Cecile Schott) finds a new idiosyncratic path in approaching the sounds of her desires. Having an immense love for the sounds of antique medieval and renaissance instrumentation but without the classical training or the presupposed musical discipline required to master them, she has taken artfully slow and gradual steps backwards into the learning process. She first began to sample her friend's classical record collections to create electronic looping compositions, then armed with effects pedals she began playing borrowed instruments and sampling herself. Last year's experiments with augmented antique music boxes has bolstered her confidence into further distilling the electronic "crutches" from her work and learn not only to play but to compose on some of the antique instruments herself. Les Ondes Silencieuses (The Still Waters) is the wondrous result of her latest efforts with studying the viola da gamba, (an ancestor to the cello but with seven strings made of gut instead of four strings made of steel), and the spinet (a baby harpsichord). Sometimes her pieces are accompanied by classical guitar, clarinet and crystal glass, but most of the time the pieces are spare letting the singular instruments sing out their sweet melodies all alone. Haunting and subdued, these post-classical and post-minimalist compositions are unique in the way that gazes backward and forward in musical time without fitting neatly into a specified place. We need a new genre to place her in. Loner Classical? Antique Folk? Whatever you want to call it, this is highly recommended!
It was like AQ was filled with giggling school girls on the day this new gorgeous Colleen release came in. If you have been in the store in recent months there is a good chance you've been here while we listened to Colleen's two albums proper Everyone Alive Wants Answers and The Golden Morning Breaks over and over. There is something so distinctive about the way her records seep into your soul. The delicacy and childlike wonder of her records has made her one of our favorite artists of the last several years. This specially packed cd in the Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series was recorded in 2004 before Colleen recorded Golden Morning Breaks and it saw her making the transition into using and playing acoustic instruments on her own and forgoing the sampling and heavy electronics of her debut. Though even on Everyone Alive... there was something so organic sounding about Colleen's songs and approach that set her apart and above so many of her contemporaries. These songs show her exploring an assortment of different instruments (zither, thumb piano, cello, ukelel, etc) but no matter what her hands are playing there is that constant amazing feeling of tender yearning beneath the achingly beautiful execution. Underlying everything is a subtle tension and haunting quality that takes the songs beyond just pretty and into a whole other category. We guess they call that the sublime. Whatever you call it, all we know is that Colleen is something totally special!
NB: This, like all Mort Aux Vaches releases, is limited and won't last long...
Colleen is the only music maker we can think of who can so perfectly crawl into our hearts, curling up and making it feel like home, with such delicacy and the softest sweetest touch. While not the official follow up to her gorgeous sophomore outing, The Golden Morning Breaks, this is a collection of recordings she made when commissioned by the French national radio station to record music for a special broadcast of Atelier De Creation Radiophonique (Radiophonic Workshop Of Creation). In taking on this commission Colleen decided to use the opportunity to further explore her love of and work with music boxes. Using everything from miniature music boxes hidden in 1940's birthday cards to huge Victorian parlor boxes, she hijacks and tweaks these boxes to create even more melodic, haunting, and beautiful creations. Whether playing them with her fingers or using a mallet, resampling, adding delay, reverb or pitch shifting, Colleen is one of those rare souls who can somehow make the sound of music boxes even more precious, delicate and dreamlike. Luckily she was happy enough with the results that she allowed Leaf to release this under the name Colleen Et Les Boites (Colleen and the Music Boxes). And once again we wish we could commission Colleen to make music for all of our dreams. So totally beautiful!
Some experimental music is more experimental than other experimental music. Nicolas Collins' Devil's Music, it's safe to say, was (and is) an Experiment. One that tests a theory described in the liner notes: "I have long assumed the radio to be the world's cheapest, yet most powerful synthesizer: you can find any sound out there; the only question is, can you find the sound you want when you want it?" Naturally, the results of this experiment fall into that realm of unusual sounds that would be reissued by Japan's ever-eccentric EM Records label, and glad we are of EM's diligent efforts to dig up such artifacts!
Devil's Music hails from the heyday of sampling music (late '80s), so it bears some similarity to the works of Christian Marclay and Steinski, but Collins is (as per his theorizing) using radios, not turntables. It also reminds us of stuff by John Oswald, the Tape-Beatles, and other "plunderphonic" artists, but in John Cage like fashion, Collins has introduced an element of chance into the genre of sample-basic music making. Inspired also by hip hop DJs, Collins' music here is performed live, in a spontaneous, improvisatory mode, at the mercy of whatever he can snatch from the local airways at that very moment to weave into his stuttery sound-collages. Every performance was thus very different in audio content, if not structure and rhythm.
Further explanation, from the liner notes to the original Devil's Music LP (1986): "[F]ragments of radio broadcasts are digitally sampled, looped, re-triggered and occasionally reversed or de-tuned. All material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occuring at the time of the performance. The performer plays off of certain musical ground-rules intrinsic to the sampling system (which consists of two modified inexpensive effect devices) to develop the quirky rhythmic interplay that characterizes the piece."
Conceptually (and chaotically) interesting, definitely, but difficult listening too. You know best your own tolerance for this sort of thing. People into rhythmic noisiness ought to like it. The density of this "music", and the element of repetition, makes it mesmeric, maybe. But for many, it might be maddening - ferinstance, hearing some anonymous announcer man say "outdoor swimming pool" over and over and over again, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nineteen style, amidst a barrage of (drum machine?) beats, before the track shifts, ADD-like, to another non-sequitur sample randomly snatched from the airwaves, is sure to drive some folks nuts!
Though the first side of Devil's Music is supposed to be "dance" oriented (he tuned into his favorite of New York's urban dance stations, like a DJ looking for breaks), the inclusion of voices from radio advertising tends to dominate. The second side of Devil's Music is maybe a bit more, um, musical seeming in its source material. "More rock, less talk" would be the motto, except it's not rock, actually easy listening and classical radio stations being plundered. Both sides are featured on the first disc of this two disc set, along with a previously unreleased 1988 tape music piece utilizing lots of voices scanned from police band radio, ship-to-shore transmissions, taxi dispatch, etc., which aren't all cut up and stuttery like on Devil's Music, but patched together into more of a "narrative" exercise.
The second disc here consists of yet more delirious variations on the Devil's Music concept, realized at live concerts in Europe and the USA, originally released on a 1987 cassette release entitled Real Landscape. And also, in addition, on this disc you'll find a computer program Collins wrote recently that's essentially a software "recreation" of his original hardware set-up and compositional strategy so that YOU can plug a radio into your computer and try making the Devil's Music yourself!! There's both Mac and PC versions provided. (Not included on the vinyl format, obviously.)
And there's extensive liner notes (complete with footnotes) from Collins about his ideas, methods, and equipment (with color photos of the latter, for all you tech geeks). EM, as always, has certainly done a thorough job with this release, which deserves the attention. Difficult listening it may be, but put into historical context, you can see how some consider Collins a bit of a techno pioneer, and certainly hear how his work foreshadowed the digital "glitch" music of Oval and Lesser and the like later on.
Having put their post-rock orchestrations on hold for the time being, the members of San Francisco's Tarentel have been exploring a number of divergent musical ideas. Guitarist Jefre Cantu has spent his sabbatical from the group exploring the arenas of digital abstraction in tinkering around with Max / MSP. Sometimes Cantu has been found working under the moniker Joshua Torres for more rhythmic pursuits and under Colophon for the atmospheric work. "Spring" - a 10" released on the promising Dreams By Degrees label - is the first recording that Cantu has done for either project, blurring spartan piano clusters and acoustic guitar samples from the other Tarentel guitarist Danny Grody. Following the lead of fellow dreamy code-slingers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu, Cantu transforms his source material into a beautiful pixelated ambience haunted with residual melodies and distant rhythms. While this artful 10" is a very nice addition to anybody's collection of Ehlers and Mathieu, its scary to think about how good Tarentel will be if they manage to synthesize Cantu's newfound laptop abilities with Tarentel's rock expansiveness.
Never heard of Commix? Neither had we. They're a Metalheadz drum and bass outfit, who traffic in the sort of mellow-ish jungle we never got that into, lots of soulful vocals, the beats clipped and minimal and everything bathed in ravey washes, but hold up, you might wanna give this a chance, as this is essentially a new Burial track, a remix that totally transforms Commix's sound into something way more washed out and ethereal, dark and druggy, a sleepy sprawl of ambient dubstep drift, it's the first new music from Burial in AGES, and it RULES. We sort of forgot how much we loved this stuff, deep softly swirling synths, muted buried melodies, clipped skeletal beats, disembodied vocals, chopped and looped and woven into mysterious moody sonic smears, all occasionally washed over by lush swells of hazy shimmer, total late night, chill out dubstep dreaminess. Might help hold you over until the next Burial full length.
Tim Green is a busy fellow. Among probably many other things he runs a recording studio, rocks out with his band The Fucking Champs, occasionally sits in with fellow Bay Area band Crime In Choir, and records in solo mode under the moniker Concentrick. His past Concentrick recordings have been often serene, occasionally krautrock rhythm'd electronic soundscapes that stand in stark, revealing contrast to his rock band endeavors. So we were surprised not only to hear some blissed out guitar work, but also to see a full band's worth of musicians make an appearance on his latest release Aluminum Lake. Then, we were even more thrown for a loop when the third track burst out of our speakers! On "White Bear" Green allows his 'Champs rock side to barge its way into his Concentrick zone with some nut-bustin' electric guitar riffage and bombastic drums. From there he, along with Jon Theodore (drums), Seth Lorinczi (bass), Lorraine Rath (flute), Jackie Perez-Gratz (cello) and Adria Otte (violin), roam freely through passages hewn from prog, metal, Kraut and pastoral inspirations. Who'd have thought we'd be describing Concentrick as being dark or propulsive or heavy? Not us! Those are words we'd normally reserve for the 'Champs. Not anymore! Seems Concentrick has become Green's catch-all for his various musical whims and moods. Quite cool nonetheless.
For almost ten years Tim Green, while living in Olympia, moving to & setting up Louder Studios here in SF, and wielding the guitar in The (Fucking) Champs, has quietly been making solo experimental electronic music. The three Concentrick albums are the fruit of those efforts. On the guitar, piano, Wurlitzer organ, plus an endless array of vintage synths (Micromoog, mellotron, Poly 61) and other quaint machines, he's constructed a quiet electronica album that issues forth unhurriedly and softly. Like Krautrock pioneers Cluster and Harmonia, or early Brian Eno circa Discreet Music, the sonic elements are invitingly simple -- rounded notes are held for many slow seconds, one imperceptibly dissolving into the next. The music exudes a sense of sustained drama without piling on layers or percussion (except in a few cases), or messing with the purity of the sounds of the vintage electronics, the added cello and the flutes. Very peaceful and serene. Practically new age... in a good way.
Solo project of Tim Green of The (Fucking) Champs. No, it's not metal. It's actually some really great drone music, kind of a multi-layered celestial grinding symphony, with interludes of tinkling clickery, hissing, stutter, etc. Quite varied and lovely, a good listen indeed. This cd is a reissue of Tim's 1996 cassette, although it sounds more like a reissue of a lost LP by some electronic krautrock experimentalist from the seventies.
Following up the recent re-worked cd re-issue of his 1996 cassette "Music For Tunnels" comes this new cd from Tim Green's Concentrick persona. Tim Green you may know as a member of The Fucking Champs, an ex-member of Nation of Ulysses, or as the producer/engineer to many of your favorite bands at his Louder Studios. With Concentrick he adds another line to his varied and impressive musical resume. Electronic pop musician? Where "Music For Tunnels" was all about the drone, this new disc is more about bubbling beats and melodic dreaminess. The '70s krautrock electronica influence is definitely still present, it's just that Concentrick has shifted focus from the placid soundscapes of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream to the more rhythmic territory associated with Kraftwerk and late-'70s Cluster. But there's more: strings, sampled voices, frenzied percolating percussion, cinematic lushness...and you can definitely hear real drums and guitar on here, at parts it's like a band playing Aphex Twin music! (and at others, it's...just like Aphex Twin music, circa "The Richard D. James Album". Not a bad thing!) If you liked the lovely "techno" interludes on the first Champs cd, or always thought that the Champs could make a better Trans Am record than Trans Am, you'll want this! Highly recommended!
The Conet Project, originally released in 1997, has attained near mythical status around here. Many folks associate The Conet Project inextricably with our store itself. Which makes sense. We championed the Conet Project relentlessly, everyone here is obsessed, most of us owning multiple copies, some of us incorporating sounds from The Conet Project into our own music, and The Conet Project still ranks as probably THEE best selling release ever at aQuarius. Even more remarkable for the fact that it's not really music at all, at least not in the typical sense, and it is and always has been pretty expensive, as a deluxe 4-cd set initially, and import to boot. In fact until it went out of print for the last time a few years back, we had sold close to one thousand copies, and that's just in our little store. We even used to have a big chart on the wall, where we kept track of the sales, and for a while, we were even taking Polaroids of people who bought the Conet Project to display in the store, a snapshot of them holding what we can only imagine would become their new favorite record (buyer #382: Mike Patton!). Which all leads to the question some of you may have, what the heck is The Conet Project, and why are we (and many of you) so obsessed with it? And so thrilled that it's finally available again?! Yes, available again and obviously a big time Record Of The Week.
Basically, the Conet Project is a now FIVE-cd compilation (more details on the new 2013 edition's additional fifth disc is down below, near the end of this long review!) of recordings of mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts, known as "numbers stations". These numbers stations are generally believed to be encrypted spy transmissions, but no concrete evidence has ever surfaced proving that supposition. However, no credible *alternate* explanation has ever been demonstrated, either. For years (ever since the start of the Cold War), amateur radio enthusiasts have come across these sinister signals, and they continue to this day, broadcast in many languages all over the world (the theory is that some are CIA, some are KBG, some are Mossad, etc).
In general, the transmissions consist of a deadpan voice (sometimes an old man, sometimes a young woman, etc.) reading a seemingly random, meaningless series of numbers over and over. Sometimes the broadcasts are preceded by a musical cue (the "Swedish Rhapsody" music box one being a favorite of ours), and sometimes the numbers are not conveyed by voice but by even more cryptic electronics (as with "The Buzzer", and other noisy, abstract stuff found mainly on disc four).
Needless to say, hearing those amazing and baffling sounds collected on these cds is an unnerving experience. Not only does knowledge of the supposed purpose of these transmissions imbue them with a disturbing quality, but the repetition of the numbers combined with the background of shortwave radio static makes for a aurally hypnotic experience. If merely regarded as a piece of experimental ambient sound sculpture, The Conet Project would be a brilliant and affecting piece of work, yet with the added context of international intelligence and conspiracy theory, it becomes even more intriguing and creepy. Lots of information is included that provides a great deal of description of, and speculation about, The Conet Project. Which is possibly the most incredible, and weirdest, item of sound art/documentation that we've EVER had here at aQuarius. Mesmerizing, fascinating, unique, massive, scary, but sometimes even soothing. 100 percent recommended to the adventurous listener ('cause it's not for everyone!). And once you have it you'll understand why it had to be so many cds - being overwhelming is part of the obsessive allure of this Project. And it's not just us, The Conet Project has popped up in lots of unlikely places, most notably it was sampled on Wilco's breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, the title of which in fact comes from The Conet Project itself. Wilco were also famously sued by Irdial, the label who released it, and they lost! Some sounds from the Conet Project also popped up in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, and over the years, we've heard it in various films and on various records, it shouldn't be surprising that so many weird music obsessives love The Conet Project.
Really, as we said, if there's one recording that seems to be most identified with aQuarius recOrds, or that at least we mention most often when trying to explain to people what it is that we're all about here, it's most definitely The Conet Project, and yeah, over the years there have been plenty of others, including Sounds of North American Frogs, Os Mutantes, Burzum's "Filosofem", Comus' "First Utterance", Boris, Circle, Philip Jeck, Village of Savoonga, and loads more since, many other records near and dear to our hearts (for instance, hearing the first Neutral Milk Hotel album always makes us nostalgic for the old 24th street store). But for some reason it's The Conet Project that really seems to sum it all up. It's all the things we really love: completely ridiculous (4, no, now 5 cds!), completely fucked (secret government spy transmissions), droning, weird. It's just so interesting and evocative on so many levels, both musical and totally non-musical, as a listening experience and also as a geopolitical cold war and beyond artifact. Definitely an all time perpetual aQ fave: Allan's got the whole thing on his iPod, so does Andee, he also owns multiple copies of the set, many of which found their way into his old band A Minor Forest's live performances, Jim has steadfastly maintained that this is the greatest record of all time, and who are we to argue? If it's not obvious, we all are a little bit obsessed.
And what this is all leading up to is that YES, finally after literally YEARS of being out of print and unavailable, The Conet Project, has been reissued AGAIN, but this time, with a WHOLE EXTRA DISC, with its own jewel case and booklet!! That's right, the new Conet Project is FIVE discs, not four, and if you're big Conet nerds like most of us, you might just have to buy a second (or even third!) copy. The new disc is not just another numbers station disc though, instead it's a collection of "noise stations", which essentially sound just like the numbers stations MINUS the numbers. So it's a series of gorgeous buzzes and strange hissing fields of blurred melody, lots of crunch and crackle, buried rhythms, whistling tones, strange textures, in fact, much of it is downright musical, so much so that we were musing, hmm, what if this new disc is in fact a hoax, a series of number/noise station like soundscapes created by some electronic musicians like Hrvatski? Naw... But there was in fact talk of a Conet remix project for years now, so it's not that far fetched, and in a way, if it WAS a hoax, it would be even cooler. But as far as we can tell, and according to our resident numbers stations / shortwave expert Jim, these are in fact that kind of weird alien sounds you can hear, tuned in to these mysterious stations. As much as we love the other four discs of The Conet Project, this new one is pretty exciting, and we have to say, definitely makes a case for buying it AGAIN! But for all the rest of you who have yet to discover the bizarre sonic mysteries of the Conet Project, there is no higher recommendation we can give, an all time unanimous aQ fave, our best selling record EVER. Sonically, and conceptually mind blowing. We never made it Record Of The Week before for some reason, but in our hearts, it has always been, and always will be, a perpetual aQ Record Of The Week!!! FOREVER.
BTW, this counts as a "box set" for shipping, it won't fit in the USPS flat rate box we use, so it'll have to go media mail or UPS if you're mailordering it domestically.
- MPEG stream: Swedish Rhapsody
- MPEG stream: 5 Dashes
- MPEG stream: Iran/Iraq Jamming Efficacy Testing
- MPEG stream: Magnetic Fields
- MPEG stream: Tyrolean Music Station
- MPEG stream: The Buzzer
- MPEG stream: "Data Bursts, 5.201kHz (USB And AM)
- MPEG stream: "Exotic Cipher, 6.215kHz/AM October 5th, 2008 19:27 GMT
- MPEG stream: "Descending Jammer, 7.969kHz/USB
- MPEG stream: "Drone, 17.964kHz
- MPEG stream: "Oscillating, 5.178kHz, March 12th, 1997
- MPEG stream: "348|10|13|36|19|21, 11.573kHz, 19:17 GMT
Pure 12" perfection! Originally released back in 2003 we're super happy this has been finally repressed! Carl Craig had just the right touch on these edits of tracks from the amazing Congos album Heart Of The Congos. This is exactly what you want in a 12", jams to be played over and over and over, Craig piecing together the already potent elements from those amazing originals into a more minimal yet totally sizzling new sound. If you don't have that Congos record yet, this could be the perfect gateway to an amazing album and if you already love that record like we do, this manages to be respectful to the originals, while taking them in totally new directions. Carl Craig proves once again that when it comes to edits and remixes, no one does it better!
A remix album, but not OF Console, rather, BY Console (the German electronicist responsible for the fab "Rocket In The Pocket" cd issued by Payola, and later, Matador). This collects remixes originally found on other other artists' albums, comps, and so forth, of stuff by Tied & Tickled Trio, Barbara Morgenstern, Isan, Console himself, and more.
Jim: I really hope that Console gets some contacts in Hollywood, as they would certainly make a lot of money scoring soundtracks for 'hip' romantic comedies staring Nick Nolte and Reese Witherspoon. Happy go lucky electronica that blatantly, delightfully rips off New Order on one track (an unusual referent that took me a while to peg... at first I thought Bola's first 12" on Skam, then early Aphex Twin, and then the 80's electro greats popped into my head...) for a pleasant if a little too accessible album.
Andee: Jim is very mysterious. For me, this is just a really cool electronic record with nods to Aphex Twin and Autechre. But it also has a definite post rock feel, having been spawned from the same scene that gave us Village of Savoonga, the Notwist, To Rococo Rot, etc...But I do like Reese Witherspoon.
Jim: Reese went to my sister's high school, so there.
It all comes around doesn't it? Through his Spectrum Spools imprint (which is manufactured by Editions Mego), John Elliott has presented work that digs into the underground of synth wrangles and electronic cosmologists with some true gems amidst his selection. A lot of these artists had been going back to older templates of experimental electronica and recrafting those sounds through new contexts and maybe a little bit of laptop trickery as well. Bee Mask certainly looks to the sharpened frequencies of Parmegiani and Schnitzler, and Temporal Maurader is a downright fictionalization of a 'lost' album of psychedelic electronica circa 1974. Container's revisionist history is in parallel with Zomby's question "Where Were You In 92?" Where Zomby would look to British hardcore techno the aesthetic for that year zero; Container pegged Detroit techno as object to reconstruct. Container is the work of Nashville's Ren Schofield, who leaps into the darkened acid techno of Richie Hawtin circa 1992 when he was recording as F.U.S.E. The insistent techno grooves march from drum sequencers that have a hand-crafted Dan Deacon type of sound. What ever he's using, it's not a 909; and the washes of toxic bubbling electronics that take their cues from 808 work-outs also have a kit-built irregularity to them. As most techno can give the impression of being so easy with so many digital sequencers that you can run from a smart phone, it's nice to hear something this angular and groovy.
Continuous Mode is the name of the real-time software that Andy Mellwig first developed when he started collaborating with Thomas Koner in the quintessential Chain Reaction post-techno / heroin-house outfit Porter Ricks. For this solo project, Mellwig has
Another haunting, meditative, dark sonic gem from local label Time Released Sound, this one a collaboration of sorts, two different groups, each taking every other track, and somehow, creating a surprisingly cohesive proper album. In fact, even though the title alludes to this being multiple groups, we sort of just assumed it was simply a strange band name, and this was all the work of a single entity. Thematically linked to the book Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, the tracks here are moody and minimal, mostly piano, but the pianos are wreathed in effects and textures, augmented by chiming melodies, and all sorts of layered ambience. There are definite differences between the two artists/sounds, with the Con_Cetta tracks, much more produced, lush and lovely, while the MonoLogue songs are murkier and gristlier, lots of hiss and static, gristle and grime. Field recordings surface throughout, and not sure if it's just us, but the last few TRS releases have been considerably darker, and Orlando is no different, with much of the record wreathed in shadow, brooding and ominous, cinematic mini-epics, that ooze dark emotion, and sinister sonic pathos. That's not to say the sounds here aren't lovely, they are indeed QUITE, but it's most definitely the sort of loveliness that disguises something darker just below the surface. And for all the differences, Con_Cetta are perfectly capable of getting grimy and murky, check out "Woe And Lamentation", which almost sounds like the two groups switched song order, and probably speaks to why both work so well together.
Fantastic stuff as always. Fans of TRS releases will of course find this essential, but for folks who have yet to delve into the mysterious musical world of Time Released Sound, and dig all things dark and mysterious, broody and moody, ambient and darkly dreamy, this could very well be the one that convinces you that you just might need to do some catching up. Fans of The Caretaker, Tim Hecker, and other practitioners of the hauntological glitch-drift arts, check it out!
As always, there are two versions, the deluxe version is totally over the top, extravagantly packaged, and LIMITED TO JUST 65 COPIES, already sold out from the label, we have THREE and that's it. It comes in a square box, covered, collaged and stamped, each with an attached antique enamel pocket watch face. Inside the box, a deconstructed / cut-up copy of the Woolf novel, a bird like nest of confetti like fragments, along with vintage paper ephemera, lace, leaves and other random bits and bobs, the cd is attached to a hub on the inside of the boxes lid, which is also printed, as is the underside of the box. Phew! The standard version is nice too, limited to 200 copies, and housed in a heavy, full color digipak.
Another haunting, meditative, dark sonic gem from local label Time Released Sound, this one a collaboration of sorts, two different groups, each taking every other track, and somehow, creating a surprisingly cohesive proper album. In fact, even though the title alludes to this being multiple groups, we sort of just assumed it was simply a strange band name, and this was all the work of a single entity. Thematically linked to the book Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, the tracks here are moody and minimal, mostly piano, but the pianos are wreathed in effects and textures, augmented by chiming melodies, and all sorts of layered ambience. There are definite differences between the two artists/sounds, with the Con_Cetta tracks, much more produced, lush and lovely, while the MonoLogue songs are murkier and gristlier, lots of hiss and static, gristle and grime. Field recordings surface throughout, and not sure if it's just us, but the last few TRS releases have been considerably darker, and Orlando is no different, with much of the record wreathed in shadow, brooding and ominous, cinematic mini-epics, that ooze dark emotion, and sinister sonic pathos. That's not to say the sounds here aren't lovely, they are indeed QUITE, but it's most definitely the sort of loveliness that disguises something darker just below the surface. And for all the differences, Con_Cetta are perfectly capable of getting grimy and murky, check out "Woe And Lamentation", which almost sounds like the two groups switched song order, and probably speaks to why both work so well together.
Fantastic stuff as always. Fans of TRS releases will of course find this essential, but for folks who have yet to delve into the mysterious musical world of Time Released Sound, and dig all things dark and mysterious, broody and moody, ambient and darkly dreamy, this could very well be the one that convinces you that you just might need to do some catching up. Fans of The Caretaker, Tim Hecker, and other practitioners of the hauntological glitch-drift arts, check it out!
As always, there are two versions, the deluxe version is totally over the top, extravagantly packaged, and LIMITED TO JUST 65 COPIES, already sold out from the label, we have THREE and that's it. It comes in a square box, covered, collaged and stamped, each with an attached antique enamel pocket watch face. Inside the box, a deconstructed / cut-up copy of the Woolf novel, a bird like nest of confetti like fragments, along with vintage paper ephemera, lace, leaves and other random bits and bobs, the cd is attached to a hub on the inside of the boxes lid, which is also printed, as is the underside of the box. Phew! The standard version is nice too, limited to 200 copies, and housed in a heavy, full color digipak.
While we've loved pretty much everything we've heard from Mira Cook so far, on this new album, Eat The Cake, she's moven to a whole new sonic level. Movement being the key, as this is the most rhythmic, pulsating, and infectious collection of songs she's created yet.
Cook seems to have found a way to bring into her music, the physical movement she excels at as a professional dancer who travels the world. Cook is equally skilled in ballet as she is modern and African dance, which again is reflected on Eat The Cake, as she takes delicate and precise steps occasionally erupting into something much more visceral and emotive. Cook's voice is more assured than ever and these songs feel much less like sketches and more like fully realized sonic statements.
Organic and odd instrumentation meet electronics, and it becomes difficult to tell which is which. The sounds on Eat The Cake combines the instrumental delicacy and wonder of Colleen and shakes them up, down and all around, adding splashes of vibrant color and passionate energy. Some songs bring to mind a magical meeting of the minds between Broadcast and Lali Puna, while some moments sound like a dizzying mix of a Gamelan orchestra and Molly Nilsson, twirling together in musical ecstasy. Evocative and alluring, purposeful and playful and so highly recommended!
Earlier in 2011, we were introduced to the heavy-drift shoegaze of The Slaves through their impeccable Ocean On Ocean album. While we eagerly await the follow-up to that album, we were stoked to discover that The Slaves' Birch Cooper has been up to quite a lot on his own beyond the tapestries of drug-drone synth and blisswave noise of The Slaves. He's collaborated with Heavy Winged / Operative drummer Jed Binderman in The Greys, worked within the metaphysical collective known as the Oregon Painting Society, and tinkered with homebuilt electronics that are just as much sculptural as they are functional. Weird Lesson bears the first fruits of Cooper's explorations with those aforementioned synths, and it's pretty damn amazing although quite a detour from The Slaves. Here, Cooper embraces his inner Conrad Schnitzler (RIP) through these semi-improvised constructions of highly stratified electric squiggle, zonked noise, and disjointed sawtooth tones with plenty of patch-bay cuts and scattershot trajectories for all of Cooper's sounds. "Physical Dream" entertains a lovely Tim Hecker like cascade of spectral, semi-melodic wash behind all of those polyphonic electronics; and here, Cooper comes closest to what he had been presenting in The Slaves. Limited to 100 copies, with just a handful of those here in our shop.
Black Dice started out as one of those groups that you HAD to see live, in part because their performances were spectacles, total club destroying free-for-alls, but also because in the early days, the music was not so much a focus as seemingly an excuse for those drug destroying antics. So while those early records did in face have some good moments, they were for the most part brutal noise drenched freakouts, better appreciated in the flesh, preferably with a brain addled by plenty of booze.
A weird thing happened though, and over the years the band morphed into something much more musical, and much more electronic, and psychedelic, as is evidenced by the recently reissued BD record where the band's sound had blossomed into something more akin to later era Boredoms, or current day Fuck Buttons, with hints of classic krautrock, and seventies hippy psych, all woven into something kind of trippy and transcendent. So what might one expect from Eric Copeland? Well the apple doesn't fall far from the psychedelic tribal rhythm-ed tree. It is on DFA after all, so there is definitely a groovy danceable component to the proceedings, more than the aforementioned Black Dice record, but that is more than balanced by a seriously ramshackle kitchen sink aesthetic, each track is a cascade of jumbled loops, of vocal snippets, little bits of horn bleat, or guitar squiggle, all draped over stumbling breakbeats and fractured rhythms, the result is dense and dizzying, less epic and sprawlingly psychedelic than later Black Dice, and more like some home brewed mad scientist alien dancefloor experimentation, with some tracks piling on the sounds, bowing under the weight of a million samples and a wild tangle of clashing beats, while others are laid back and woozy, sometimes sounding like Ween covering "Lowrider", and other times like a 'dance' remix of some Ariel Pink B side, and at others like Art Of Noise jamming with the Boredoms. All in all, it's gloriously noisy, loose and on the verge of collapse, fractured and fucked up, seriously psychedelic, and kinda summery and fun, but with plenty of shadowy sinister sonic weirdness lurking just below the surface of even the sunshiniest popsounds here, positioning Joke In The Hole somewhere between weirdo noise rock, damaged dance music, and avant collaged art rock...
