Selected Ambient Works Volume II has been required listening since the album was originally released in 1994 right as the Aphex Twin was poised to capture the world's imagination with his mutant electronica, self-immolating techno, and acid laden drill 'n' bass. Here, the second chapter of Aphex's ambient works (sadly, no third volume followed this) is exactly what is claims to be, a brilliant collection of ambient works that re-engineered and re-interpreted Brian Eno's definition of ambient as a convoluted Phillip K. Dick cosmology of dreaming androids and quixotic sentient machines. This album stands at a crossroads of a number of musicological strains, with Aphex Twin's Richard D. James self-aware and self-conscious of the broader implications of making not just a collection of ambient music, but in making *this* collection of ambient music at *that* particular time. In the post-rave aftermath in the UK of the early '90s, chill-rooms were the zones for all sorts of lightweight collages of directionless new age musics and much of the 'ambient' music that was being produced around those chill-rooms was essentially amphorous techno that tempered the rhythm to a soft pulse and added a bird song here or there (e.g. The Orb, Future Sound Of London); but an ambient music that spoke to a community that was beginning to shape their digital / virtual selves was lacking.
Enter Richard D. James and the Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume Two. The album follows the direction of Eno's Music For Airports with 24 vignettes that ascribe to a constant atmosphere of gilded tones and lugubrious rhythms, which are more often sequenced patterns and cybernetic echoes through mercurial pools of sound. Tracks glisten, lurch, dissolve, morph, materialize, crystallize, bloom, and collapse amidst a subtle latticework of beguiling electronic melody, something that the Aphex Twin has always had in spades. It was a brilliant record when it came out, and it's still brilliant today. This is especially true with the resurgance of new age wallpaper music, as this album outshines pretty much everything on the current landscape.
For nostalgia's sake, we'll reprise what we wrote nearly twenty years ago about this record: "James sonically replicated the post-slumber / pre-waking state when sunlight first strikes the dream riddled eye within the memory banks of his rewired samplers. A beautiful, synaesthetic and haunting post-techno ambient album that really must be heard!" How true. How true.
For this review of the first record in 13 years from Aphex Twin, we turn over control to aQ pal Greg Groff, who had ALL of this to say about Syro:
Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, while undoubtedly considered one of the key figures within dance music and dance culture, simultaneously manages to both celebrate and mock, or at least have fun with, that very same dance music and dance culture. He has one foot firmly planted on the dancefloor while he uses the other to give dance music a good kick in the ass. This couldn't be more true than on Syro, which actually might be his most danceable album in years, maybe ever. Whereas albums like, Richard D. James, I Care Because You Do, and Drukqs, might make you think you can dance to them, before throwing you horribly out of step, it's conceivable that one could actually dance to the songs on Syro, without missing a beat. This might initially suggest that Syro might be Aphex Twin's least adventurous album, his most conventional to date. Of course it could be pointed out, that relative to his other albums, the idea of Aphex Twin making a straightforward dance record is in itself sort of adventurous. If only it was that simple, if only Syro was in fact a straightforward dance record.
There is a way, it seems, in which Richard D. James, is aware of the manipulative potential of dance music. The way to reach enough people, especially if they were, say, on ecstasy, to march like lemmings off the edge of a cliff, if you led them with the right beat. The "right" beat being the most repetitive and predictable, lockstep rhythm. Aphex Twin's music however has never been interested in doing this and Syro is no exception. James' music is more interested in subverting and somehow actually drawing our attention to the way in which we can be manipulated by that repetition. That may be more true than ever on Syro, simply cuz this record might actually get you to dance. But just when you start to get lost in a groove, something alien and ominous will creep in, like a spider letting you know that you've been caught in it's web. These moments, of which there are plenty, make it clear that if you came to this particular dance party expecting the usual bit of the ol' bump-n-grind, then you should prepare to have your expectations confounded constantly. These moments are akin to being at a party when the acid starts to kick in and things begin to get a bit strange.
There is a lot about Syro as a whole, that brings to mind Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker". It's not that any one song is that sonically similar to "Windowlicker", although many of the songs do juxtapose dance tropes with weirder, more experimental sounds, in a way that does seem similar. But what Syro has in common with "Windowlicker" is actually more philosophical and has more to do with the content of the Chris Cunningham directed video, than the song itself. The way in which the two male protagonists show up to an Aphex Twin "hosted" "dance party", with the expectation of having nothin' but a good time, only to be caught off guard by something far stranger, and to their sensibilities, far more disturbing. This album, much in the same way, is constantly disturbing and defying any expectations of where the listener thinks it might go. Take a song like "180 db", which aside from the wavering and almost sickly tone in the background (which might already be saying something), comes across as a straight ahead banger. But just when things seem to be getting a bit too normal, this most "normal", and perhaps tellingly shortest, of all the tracks, leads into one of the strangest intros on the record, namely the tweaked "AFX 237V7" A.K.A. "Rubber Johnny"-like vocals of "Circlont 6A". Not that Aphex Twin is any stranger to confounding expectations, he's been doing it his whole career, it's just that on Syro, he might be doing it in a way that is surprisingly, and subversively subtle.
And it's not just the music, the 3rd panel of the sleeve, contains a dauntingly lengthy list of all (or most of) the musical equipment that Aphex used to create Syro. It gives one the idea that one piece of equipment was used for 20 seconds here, and then for the next 20 seconds an entirely different piece was used, and so on throughout the album, maybe never using the same gear or sound more than once. Although that's fairly unlikely, the sounds on Syro are in constant flux, displaying an array of sounds, maybe more varied on any of his other albums. And if you listen very closely, you might notice that, indeed, you maybe never really do hear the same sound twice. Another reason this might be the most subtle Aphex yet, is because of how those disparate sounds are so seamlessly woven into a cohesive whole. And again, this may have the less discerning listener thinking that they are hearing something more consistent on Syro, and therefore more conventional, rather than the constant dizzyingly varied sonic concoction that is Syro. This is really a testament to Richard D. James' skill as an artist and his refinement of those skills.
If there is one thing that really sets Syro apart from its predecessors, it may be the vocals. Not that James has never used vocals before, but nowhere have they been more prevalent than on Syro. Rest assured, there's no real actual singing, and in most cases the vocals are heavily affected, as to be barely discernible as human. It's probably telling that he listed his Mum and Dad's vocals right along with the other equipment in his arsenal. Cuz, really, he treats voices here as he would any other sound. He takes something extremely organic and human and turns it into something totally alien and/or machine-like, just as, in the same way, he will take a machine-like beat or sound and make it skip or sputter, or display some imperfection, that makes it seem alternately, somehow more organic or human. It's these juxtapositions between contradictions, such as machine and human, inorganic and organic, dark and light, and so on, that inform Aphex Twin's music as a whole, and help it to play with our expectations of what it is or should be. And on Syro that use of voices heightens this idea to great effect.
In writing about Syro, it seems that many people have either described it as being Aphex Twin's most consistently different album, or conversely, that it's really nothing new under the sun, just another Aphex Twin album. While this is obviously a paradox, it's not surprising that Aphex Twin would invite such paradoxes. In truth Syro IS both: something new under the sun, and unmistakably an Aphex Twin album. Syro is definitely full of sounds you've never heard before, some that you have, but the way in which these sounds are manipulated and composed, mixed and matched and morphed and all tangled up, leaves little question as to who made these sounds.
There's something in the music of Aphex Twin that mirrors the way Richard D. James' face is presented to us in his videos, the way in which his face gets superimposed onto other faces that are not his own. Similarly, many types of sounds and equipment that have been well explored by others somehow find James superimposed, turning them into something unquestionable all his own. Seeing Richard D. James' face superimposed on so many other faces, in one way, makes it hard to know, just who the actual Aphex Twin is, and thus, while listening to Syro, it's that mystery, that constant sonic superimposition and recontextualization, that truly makes it an Aphex Twin album. And while various sounds and rhythms might have surfaced in different forms elsewhere, there's never any doubt that this is an Aphex Twin album. It's in this way that Syro, while resolutely standing on its own, and sounding its own way, still fits in nicely with the rest of Aphex Twin's discography.
The latest from Berlin's Sascha Ring aka Apparat hardly seems appropriate to what the layman might expect from a label called Shitkatapult. Warm, fragile, pretty electronica with many acoustic, human elements? Yes! If T. Raumschmiere (another Shitkatapult-related artist) represents the electronica version of loud rock n' roll, then Apparat is a pensive singer-songwriter. Not that Apparat doesn't bring the beats, this is definitely electronic music, even with guitars and clarinet and other instrumentation from the pre-Powerbook age. It's just that Apparat's glitchy, grainy 'lectronic textures give way to melodic quietude and ...gasp... sensitive, delicate indie-rock boy vocals. Autechre meets the Sea and Cake? An even more electronic Kid A? So nice.
Apparat offer up six more skittery tweaked IDM tracks. The best of the half dozen is the final one "Radau". Imagine an argument between synthesized chimey chirps and squidgey blats overseen by a heavy rumbling bass thud presence. Note: although this is called an EP, it is actually over fifty minutes long!
Walls begins on familiar ground for German electronic artist / producer Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) -- chiming music box-y melancholics with strings that slide silkily across the glistening sonic icicles. From there Apparat skitters all over the musical map, only touching down briefly on his well-travelled techno and IDM hotspots. Although this is definitely far heavier and darker in mood than his wispy 2003 album Duplex, it's by no means lacking in emotion and warmth. The unexpected but very welcome soulful vocals of Raz Ohara certainly play a major role in this regard. Nice.
Just a 3-track dose of Apparat Organ Quartet, and to be frank, it really doesn't do this group justice. You only get a mere glimpse of this Icelandic organ-synthesizer-keyboard-allsorts foursome's scope. The first percolating track sounds a lot like a slightly more aggressive Postal Service, whereas the second is a little more insistent and rockin' like a slightly less aggressive Add N To (X) or Trans Am, and the third is a revisiting of the first track. Not quite as good as some of their contributions to compilations that we've carried in the past, but pretty fun nonetheless. Their label notes Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, and '70s horror soundtracks as influences, and that very well may be true. However, the most audible influence on this ep is that of Kraftwerk. FYI: AOQ members have worked with the likes of Marc Almond, Hafler Trio, Sigur Ros, Barry Adamson, Stillupsteypa, Mum, Pan Sonic and... Hermann Nitsch!
Finally, the seemingly impossible to get full length release from this amazing Icelandic organ-synthesizer-keyboard combo gets a proper widespread release! Think Stereolab, Trans Am, Kraftwerk, M83, mix in a little Add N To (X), a little Postal Service and you'll be in the ballpark. From straight-up Stereolab worship, the first track is the best Stereolab song that never was (albeit with a Speak And Spell on lead vocals), to full on synth-rock with buzzy guitars and huge thick burping fuzz organ basslines with cool Kraftwerky computer vocals, to blissy M83 style romantic fuzzscapes, to goofy burbly loungy bleep and bloop, to some distinctly Kraftwerkian krautrock. AOQ's quadruple organ attack is tough to beat. You know how when a band had two guitarists, maybe three, it just made the guitar sound that much thicker and in your face, well, just imagine FOUR ORGANS rocking full on! Woah! And one of the organs just so happens to be manned by AQ fave Johan Johannsson (who also produced the record). In the past various AOQ members have worked with the likes of Marc Almond, Hafler Trio, Sigur Ros, Barry Adamson, Stillupsteypa, Mum, Pan Sonic and even Hermann Nitsch! But you won't find any blood soaked cacophony here. Nope, this is all warm and warbly, dreamy and bouncy, fun and fuzzy.
Gorgeous cover art featuring oil paintings of the various members of the band as Playmobile figures!!
The strangely named duo Applehead is in fact one part the duo (?) Anworth Kirk (which we're pretty sure is at least one part former Record Of The Weekers Demdike Stare (also a duo, confused yet?)), and Applehead's debut record is the second release on Pre-Cert, a label run by Finders Keepers' Andy Votel and the guys in Demdike Stare, focusing on, according to the label themselves, contemporary musical and nonmusical material, referencing research libraries/VHS video culture/electronic Folkways records/sound poetry/tape manipulation/European fumetti/outsider art/field recording and more. Essentially, the music on Pre-Cert, and specifically this new one by the mysterious Applehead, is in fact, some seriously twisted, far out, faux seventies Italo disco soundtrack music. At least that's what we're getting from all that. A heady collection of heavy fuzzed out grooves, strange voices, creepy ambience, all woven into what sounds like the score to the greatest, and creepiest, seventies giallo you've never seen.
The record begins with some haunting, soundtracky murk, all buried melodies, muted buzz and crunch, over which a reverbed female voice intones some mysterious message in some foreign language, all the while ominous chords ring out, until BAM, in swoops a fat funky Italo disco groove, super distorted and gloriously fuzzy, the synths heavy and in-the-red, wah guitars, but the sound is strangely washed out, the groove surrounded by streaks of ghostly shimmer, clouds of effects, the end result is a killer krautrock / space rock sci-fi funk.
The record is peppered with strange little interludes, more of that voice, like a snippet from a film, woven into creepy swirling ambience, blurred minimal dronemusic, but it's not long before the next groove comes in, and it's another buzz drenched bit of giallo style faux soundtrack funkiness, dubbed out percussion, tinkling melodies, complete with terrified gasps and shrieks of females in peril. The A side wraps up with a heavy slice of organ driven haunted house moodiness, that definitely had us thinking Goblin, Zombi, Umberto and the rest of those sci-fi retro futurists.
The flipside offers up more of the same, some pulsing thrum that gives way to another blast of seventies horror funk, chuggy wah wah guitars, muscly drums, creepy minor key melodies, spectral howls super distorted synth buzz, all woven into a heavy organ kraut-funk groove. Finally the record winds down with what is the perfect Italo horror score, another woozy groove, funky and slinky, low slung and slithery, a little dubby, a little disco-y, wreathed in a spectral haze, and rife with haunting melodies, a serious slab of classic John Carpenter style seventies style suspenseful soundtrackiness.
Awesome stuff, and WAY recommended for anyone into the current crop of sci-fi soundtrackers and retro Goblin worshippers, as well as the various strains of modern hauntological soundscaping (a la Demdike Stare)...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
We love the out-there improvs of legendary jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and the idea of him teamed up with an equally out-there electronics maverick (Jon Appleton, natch) was enough to get us excited about this cd reissue of the duo's 1970 recording Human Music. Cherry, then a fixture on the NYC free jazz scene, was invited to be an artist-in-residence by young Dartmouth music professor Appleton -- who just happened to have a Moog-laden electronic music studio at his disposal. The resulting collaboration is an early exercise in "live" electronic-meets-acoustic music -- as the studio techniques of musique concrete, like splicing and editing tapes with razor blades, couldn't be applied to a real-time improv duet, so Appleton had to find ways for Cherry's playing (on both horns and sundry percussion) to immediately "trigger" responses from the studio's arsenal of synths. The results are VERY bleepy-blurpy-whooshy, like something from a freaky sci-fi soundtrack, and Cherry's trumpet is often obscured by the electronic effects. We can't say that Human Music is an absolutely essential Don Cherry album but it's definitely an interesting novelty in his discography and it's cool to get to hear it now!
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So let's get the business stuff out of the way first. THIS IS VERY LIMITED. In fact, we have the only 17 copies left. Of the 50 ever produced. We tend to be kind of opposed to ultra limited releases, obviously if a release is good enough to release at all, and then spend loads of time and money on, then it makes sense that you would want as many people as possible to hear it. But sometimes cicumstances make that unrealistic.
Running a label is hard. Especially when you specialize in really strange music, spend a lot of money on packaging, and then don't sell a whole lot of records. Even though the records you release are amazing. This happens way more than you think. Often the result is cool little labels just giving up. Which is always a drag. In the case of Dielectric, another label with a houseful of unsold records, all of which we've raved about here, the solution was to start doing super limited, lovingly assembled cd-r's, limiting the financial risk, and of course the amount of space needed to store the damn things. So here we have the newest release by Arastoo, aka Arastoo Darakhshan, who produces some of the most haunting, gorgeously ethereal ambient music we've ever heard. Drifting and shimmering, these thirteen tracks, embrace nature, but in a totally abstract way, dark soundscapes of distant vibrations and subtle sonic shifts, late night expanses of moonlight and forest flutter, smoothed into warm, rich drones. There seems to be guitars, but the actual notes are muted and spread into dreamy ethereal wisps of sound. Really amazing. Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Chalk and Basinski have nothing on Arastoo. Packaged with six oversized cards, printed with full colour images of industrial landscapes, mostly blown up abstract details, wrapped in a vellum outer sleeve that folds shut like the petals of a flower and is held closed with a wax seal!
Be warned, the wax seal is VERY delicate and will most likely crack or crumble in the mail, or even on the shelf, you'll just have to deal with it since you'll have to break the wax seal anyway to listen to it. So don't expect an intact one.
And again we only have 17 copies. After these are gone, it is gone for good!
Once again, we can just tell when a record is going to be a hit here. Something intangible that tells us that everyone is going to absolutely love (or absolutely hate but still need to own) this record. We felt it about the Conet Project. Hatebeak. Daddy's Curses. The Thai Elephant Orchestra. And now Arboga Teenage Riot.
The story goes like this. Our pal Nathan was on tour in Europe and while travelling through Sweden, two young ladies handed him a tape. The tape sat in the bottom of his bag, unlistened to for months. On his return to the states he remembered the tape, put it in the stereo, pushed play and had his mind promptly blown. And we'll have to admit we feel exactly the same way. Imagine ultra lo-fi, high energy techno / gabber, all four on the floor beats and cheesy synths, whistles and those kinds of melodies usually reserved for cheerleading competitions. "You All Ready For This?!?!" DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK! You know of what we speak. So now imagine two teenage girls, sometimes making up Swedish lyrics and chanting them in cute sing-songy harmonies, but more often, just screaming and growling hysterically in their best aproximation of black metal vocals, sounding like they were just dubbed over the music on a boombox (which they probably were). This is the real digital hard core! Or more accurately ANALOG HARD CORE!!! If Alec Empire had any balls Arboga Teenage Riot would be the next DHR superstars. ATR take techno and black metal and riot grrl and DIY recording and turn it into a totally bizarre, fascinating, fun and funny masterpiece! The cover is pretty sharp too, a huge swamp beast thing emerging from the water, beneath a hot pink totally illegible Arboga Teenage Riot black metal style logo! Fuck yeah!
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There are so many offshoots of the prog/psych realm that cross into other genres, whose listeners would probably really enjoy, but don't ever get the chance due to the inherent flaws of niche marketing. Luigi Archetti's "Cubic Yellow" is one of those... Known for his collaborations with Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru) in Tiere Der Nacht, Swiss avant-guitarist Archetti now presents this exceptional downtempo electronica album with Hoovering swells that sound like Dom & Roland played at 33 1/3 rpm instead of 45 along with skittering breakbeats not unlike a stripped down Amon Tobin. Fans of Biosphere or The Orb should definitely take note of this one!!!
This very interesting collaboration between Kwodo Eshun and Franz Pommasl is a poetic if very clinical sonic elaboration of the metaphor that the history of electronica may be seen as having a corporeal body capable of thought, pulse, and breath. Pommasl manifests the nervous system & ventilation capacity of this cybernetic body with piercing shrieks of digital feedback and machines gasping for air, while Eshun's fragmented words are disembodied and made alien through the elaborate processing. Eshun is an African writer living in London who often writes for the Wire. Pommasl has made some of the most brutalist digital/noise/electronica records to date for Sabotage and Mego.
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Arcon 2 is the darker pseudonym for Reinforced's Leon Mar. His debut album as A2, moves steadily from jazzed out drum & bass, to fierce darkcore, much in line with No U-Turn and Chrome. Fans of Ed Rush and Panacea take note.
THE weird, Mr. Bungle-ized Norwegian black metal album of the millennium, featuring Garm of Ulver and Hellhammer of Mayhem. "Rewind" from the start of the first song to hear the hidden bonus trip hop track!
Sounding something like a hybrid of Lustmord and Dopplereffekt, Trans Plutonian Transmissions is a long lost album from Brian Lustmord's one-album side project Arecibo, released back in 1994 through the Dark Vinyl imprint Atmosphere. This offshoot of its more seminal dark ambient / post-industrial main label was something of a conceit to the blossoming ambient techno scene of the early '90s, spiralling out of labels like Emit, Fax, and Reflective. Lustmord is best known for his quintessential dark ambient work of subterranean drones and deep space isolationism on the timeless and existentially bleak albums Heresy and The Place Where The Black Stars Hang. In fact, Trans Plutonian Transmissions was recorded about the same time as Black Stars, and draws from the same conceptual pool by sourcing the universe itself albeit to different ends. The dark matter and occluded hues of that album resound in Trans Plutonian Transmissions but with the major addition of stalking downtempo rhythms and acidic 303 basslines. Plenty of NASA communications with astronauts and reclaimed data from NASA research into pulsars, quasars, and black holes embue this album with paranoid aesthetic paralleling the X-Files; and those pointilistic squiggles and squelches dropped into minor key chords and judiciously bathed in blackening reverberation further those metaphors. The one Arecibo record had a few contemporaries, including the Patashnik album from Biosphere, the Pete Namlook / Richie Hawtin collaborations as From Within, as well as the early Pan Sonic and Mono Junk recordings of icey post-techno out of Finland, all from the mid '90s. The album is a product of its time, but is certainly no worse for the wear because of it. Lustmord's production touch is impeccable as always, lending that steely gaping quality to every sound, as if it were slowly getting injested by a galaxy crushing black hole. Recommended.
Another fantastic bit of electronic dronescaping, this one from the mysteriously monikered Arkhonia, which is apparently one half of a UK collaborative project called even more mysteriously, jz-arkh. We couldn't discover much else about these guys (or this guy) but it hardly matters, this is some gorgeous and heady deep listening, melding pop ambient shimmer, with Eno like drift, long form LaMonte Young style sonic exploration and hushed modern minimalism. Long stretches of muted buzz and smeared abstract melody, all gauzy and hazy and dreamlike, notes are stretched out and laid atop one another, creating, gently undulating expanses of murmured whir and crystalline hum. Soft squalls of hissing white noise are smoothed out into the dreamy white noise of waves on a beach, all blurred into a slowly shifting cloud of pixelated grey wash, tinkling melodies ring out and sunk beneath warm sonic swells, chopped and looped subtly into something approaching a rhythm, but dissipating before achieving any sort of momentum, instead left to drift and float and hover. Some moments definitely remind us of the gorgeous aquatic sounding digital errata of Oval, all warped and woozy overlapping skippings and skitterings, while others are pure warm sound, peppered with bursts of what sound like strings or chords, suspended in some sort of sonic ether.
The closing song suite creates a swirling dramatic cloud of almost sci-fi sounding tension, with deep swells of processed organs wrapped in a hazy psychedelic halo of smeared soft focus gauze, before finishing off with another sculpted white noise soundscape, the hiss and static creating indistinct shapes and textures, obfuscating a creeping low end whir, which eventually overtakes the white noise, unfurling to the finish with a Raster-Noton like field of minimal click and hum. Awesome.
Dutch duo Arling and Cameron provide the soundtrack to your next space age bachelor pad party. Lots of nineties-style smooth beats on top of lounge music, breathy sixties girlpop-style vocals. A crowd pleaser, but I swear, this imaginary film soundtrack business has got to stop....
Icol Diston is a collection of the the first three 12"s from Berlin's Arovane, who in his brief career, has succeeded in recreating the melancholic IDM / electronica of Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Markant. Arovane is at his best when maintaining a repetitive flow of counterpointing minor-key melodies alongside sputtering breakbeats, but tends to lose focus when dropping the structures of his music in favor of floating ambience and fluttering basslines. Mastered entirely from the vinyl editions of these tracks "to preserve the original sound quality."
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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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Arovane's debut is a fitting complement to the rainy day electronics of Boards of Canada. Arovane set up downer IDM rhythms that have slowed down considerably from the mid-tempo algorithmic skitter of his earlier Funkstorung-esque singles. "Tides" is filled with seaside ambient washes and Durutti Column like guitar plucks for an album focusing more on moody timbre than rhythmic exposition.
In Light is the sublime debut solo effort from local musician/writer Alexis Georgopoulos who has been a stalwart presence in many amazing bands around these parts including A Tension, The Alps and, until recently, Tussle. The tumultuous break from the latter band has worked in Georgopoulos' favor as we're not sure he would have delved as deeply into this project, as it is so far removed from Tussle's infectious party grooves. Instead on In Light, he channels the warmer elements of seventies German electronica (Cluster, Eroc, Popol Vuh), and the more organic qualities of twentieth century composition (Terry Riley, Jon Gibson) to make an album that has the strange effect of moving while standing still. Even Roedelius from Cluster has given his blessing by remixing an Arp track for an upcoming single release. Like the picture of the sunset on the cover, let Arp's warm and effervescent rays of sound wash over and envelop your psyche. Recommended!
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This brand new ep by Alexis Georgopolous aka Arp (previously of Tussle and The Alps) cements the retro-fueled art-pop tendencies of his last album, More, with the atmospheric textures of his earlier work into something more fluid and immediate. What drives it along is the use of a full band (More was a multi-tracked solo affair), and that not only gives it a much-welcomed sonic heft, but allows for a more organic and unpredictable flow. The meteoric guitar noise from Alps bandmate Jefre Cantu-Ledesma bathes the tracks in a luscious shoegazed sheen, channeling Tiger Mountain era Brian Eno and propelling it outward into the stratosphere. There is definitely a more cosmic feel here, less kosmiche and more electric, propulsive and magnetic, boosted by the addition of a Le Revelateur remix that reminds us of an instrumental La Dusseldorf track passed through the Harmonia blender. Quite Stellar!
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Classic first album finally reissued on cd with bonus stuff on a second disc!
Finally, the original scores of Andrei Tarkovsky's films Mirror and Stalker get a proper reissue. We previously listed the eighties re-recordings of this soundtrack music on Mirumir a while back, but this Superior Viaduct reissue is, dare we say it, far superior, filling out the Mirror score with some of the nostalgic Russian folk music and classical elements that the other reissue lacked.
The Stalker score, short as it is, might just be our favorite of Artemiev's recordings. A mix of epic alien ambiance and pastoral psych melodies of flutes, and guitars in metallic acidic washes. It evokes a more intense version of Popol Vuh's iconic scores for Werner Herzog. A perfect accompaniment to Tarkovsky's existential and brutalist spiritual journey that seemingly borrows from The Wizard of Oz's dual worlds of black and white and color, but suggests a more creepy pre-Chernobyl vision of the transformative magic of a toxically-charged colorized environment. Mirror on the other hand is an uncompromising headlong dive into a darkly magical past of longing, regret and the unreconcilable effects of memory. The music, brooding and intense, full of liturgical ambiance and an unsettling sense of nostalgia, punctuated by old world folk tropes and romantically distant classical fugues weighs heavy. Both scores, as well as the films they accompany are beautifully powerful and deep, and come highly recommended!
After recently making two recent offerings on the REDACTED label into Records Of The Week (REDACTED and REDACTED), we figured we oughta review a couple other kick ass REDACTED releases that somehow slipped under our radar. One of those is a collection of lost tracks from a REDACTED teenage synth / electro-pop duo, with the unlikely name ARTIST 11, whose REDACTED lp originally released in REDACTED is a synth nerd holy grail.
The tracks here were recorded around the same time as REDACTED, but were only rediscovered in REDACTED, and include a mix of unreleased tracks and reworked versions of older songs. And the sound definitely seems right at home amongst the current crop of synth retro-revivalists, in fact, if these guys weren't so obscure, you'd swear some of the synth kids today owed much of their sound to these two. But unlike much of the brooding Carpenter / Goblin worship these days, a lot of the music here is fun and playful, even kind of goofy, it is after all a couple of teenagers with 2 synths, a drum machine and a 4 track, just check out opener "REDACTED" with its woozy vocodered vox, bloopy bleepy percolating synths and skittery drum machines, or the krautrocky "REDACTED" which sounds a little like Kraftwerk gone haywire, with some bizarre sampled voices, and a deep dramatic main vocal.
There's also a strange cover of a German children's song, with lyrics by Kurt Weill, which sounds like the guy who plays organ in the mall, all cheesy easy listening organ and shuffling rhythm underneath weird sing songy vocals and twisted music box melodies.
And while all that playful goofiness is occasionally balanced by tracks like "REDACTED", a dark, brooding, slightly sinister, slab of soundtracky synth creep, the record seems to spend most of its time pulsating through autobahn like expanses of sleeky synthy futurism, and groovy electro-synth, pop weirdness, the songs super varied, and featuring a surprising array of vocalists, and vocal styles, which gives the record a distinctly twisted outsider vibe. Killer stuff, and definitely recommended for the legions of aforementioned retro synth revivalists out there.
Pressed on 180 gram green vinyl, housed in super striking silver on green jackets, and LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, each on hand numbered. Sold out at the label, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get.
Record number REDACTED from this dubstep revolutionary, and another shift even further away from proper dubstep. Like the REDACTED preceeding records, ARTIST 11 unfurls a lush landscape of ethereal drift and deep beat driven ambience, and while fans of the first REDACTED will find much to love here as well, there have been some subtle sonic shifts that are worth noting.
Not that the opener would give any indication, a lush expansive stretch of washed out dreamy cinematic synth shimmer, that remains beatless throughout, the sound grows gradually darker, until sampled voices surface, and this 'intro' leads directly into a track that sounds almost like Phoenix or Miike Snow, at least at first, a repetitive piano figure that in other hands would lead into some dream pop, but here, provides the melodic backbone for some seriously mesmerizing dubstep skitter, the beat thick and heavy, but still skeletal, while all around, fragmented melodies swirl, bits of vocal surface and fade away, "REDACTED" though is where the record comes into its own, and displays a shift away from the lush ethereal atmospheres and toward something a bit more stripped down, the change is subtle, but it definitely works, sounding more like Burial here, a creeping tarpit drag, with some thick corrosive bass wobble, that's wreathed in effects which gives it a whole different effect, and the vocals here, hazy and and angelic, balanced by some sped up soul vocals that are transformed into woozy abstract melodies, it's the sort of jam that transcends 'dubstep' or any genre classifications, a gorgeous bit of electronica that we could listen to forever. But then "REDACTED" lays down another killer groove, with more super distorted bass wobble, the whole track driven by a sped up looped vocal, and suddenly what we perceived as a less lush sound, or a more stripped down sound, is revealed as something more akin to economy of sound, it's not that things have been removed, but that everything is perfectly place, and there are no superfluous sonics, which becomes more evident as the record progresses, whether it's a loping dubbed out stutter, or a whirling sprawl of psychedelic ambience, a skittery almost hip hop groove, or Muslimgauze like Eastern tinged trip out. Ethereal and blissed out and dreamy one second, haunting and ominous and sonically sinister the next, check out the closer "REDACTED", a gorgeous chunk of dubbed out rumbling bass heavy slo-mo soul, an be sure to stick around for the hidden track, which might be the darkest and heaviest of the bunch.
Yet again, another album of untouchable beat bliss innovation from maybe our favorite dubstep outfit out there...
We've mentioned it before, but we love it when people we know make amazing records, and we're then available to share them with all of you. Such is the case with this, the oddly monikered ARTIST 14, the project of aQ customer/pal REDACTED, who hails from REDACTED, and who is solely responsible for the gorgeous sounds to be found on REDACTED, a collection of abstract ambience, deep drones, and experimental rhythmic minimalism.
Beginning with the brief minute long intro "REDACTED", a smoldering bit of crumbling distorted piano, and shimmering overtone rich drift, ARTIST 14 reveals itself as something more raw and immediate than much of the ambient/drone/electronic music we hear. It's super well crafted, and lush and lovely, but it's still raw, and rough around the edges, which makes the sounds more warm, the vibe more human and organic, instead of sounds, these feel like songs, long tones shimmer and undulate, melodies seem to slowly evaporate into a haze of high end whir, scattered throughout are fragmented rhythms, dubby and abstract, disembodied pulses and ghostly beats, a sort of electrokrautrock that seems to be gradually coming apart, like some old space station left in orbit, the various pieces drifting off into the ether, some into the heart of the sun, some into the cold black void, here liquid squelches demarcate loose swirling melodic tangles, and thick swells of feedback wreathed buzz, acoustic guitars let loose spare notes, that flutter like leaves falling from trees, or mysterious detritus floating through space.
In a few places, the sounds go haywire, explosive bursts of almost jungle like rhythms, or exploding firecrackers woven into frantic beats, but even then the sounds surrounding these blasts are warm and whirling and sweetly soothing, while elsewhere, the sounds slip into dubby Portishead like low slung downtempo grooves, culminating in the 14+ minute epic "REDACTED", a constantly shifting soundscape that plays out like a soundtrack to some mysterious art film, swirling electronics, lush textures, fractured effects, pulsing synths, the sound seeming to shift ever minute or two, finishing off with a stretch of grinding downtuned lo-fi dirgery, which leads directly into the closing number, a fantastically blissed out sprawl of super distorted melodies, all hazy and spacey and dreamlike, but wrapped in crunchy buzz and hissy static, which eventually slips away, leaving lush lustrous sonic swells, lovely hushed computer vox and what sounds like field recording, all woven into a softly undulating bit of dreamlike drift.
Fantastic stuff. Highly recommended.
Another gorgeous collection of blissed out ambience from local label Time Released Sound, this one from a TRS vet, Mr. Wil Bolton, whose Quarry Bank release was a big hit around here, and who in Ashes Of Piemonte, is teamed up with another like minded soundmaker by the name of Lee Anthony Norris. The two together have conjured up a broody bit of haunting minimalist drift, one that's not that far removed from what we're discovering is a sort of "Time Released Sound SOUND", and while each band has their own distinct take on THAT sound, at its core, it's typically an ethereal, ephemeral ambience, neo-classical dronescapery that's softly psychedelic, hushed and mysterious, almost new agey at times, an electronic flecked dreaminess that blends organic and machine generated sounds into something lush and lovely. Winter's Fire though takes that TRS sound and darkens it a bit, adding an overcast patina, the sound more grey and rainswept, low tones rumbling and shimmering beneath crystalline flecks of glimmering melody, hazy swaths of voice like synth floating weightless above softly thrumming chordal swells, the sound almost choral in places, very cinematic, wistful and melancholy, a weary, washed out sprawl of delicate moody mesmerism, drifting spectrally through field recordings of rainfall, mysterious echo drenched samples, and ghostly voices, all of which seem to fade eerily into the gauzy shimmery backdrop Bolton and Norris so effortlessly weave. Fans of other Time Released Sound releases will most definitely not be disappointed, but folks into sounds darker and dronier, might just want to give this one a try, a perfect mix of hushed haunting ambience, ominous cinematic soundscaping and dark droning drift.
As with all Time Released Sound releases, Winter's Fire comes in two versions, one a pricey ultra deluxe package, and less expensive standard one. The deluxe version this time around consists of a stamped and printed page from a 100 year old apothecary's ledger, complete with all the original hand written prescriptions, the page has tiny twigs woven into it, and the whole thing is tied with antique string, to which is attached an old brass clothespin. All of that is then housed in an antiqued envelope, printed and distressed with ash, ink and pastels, then hand stamped and sealed with wax. WOW. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have but a handful. The Standard version is less limited and comes housed in a simple printed paper sleeve, slightly smudged and distressed.
Another gorgeous collection of blissed out ambience from local label Time Released Sound, this one from a TRS vet, Mr. Wil Bolton, whose Quarry Bank release was a big hit around here, and who in Ashes Of Piemonte, is teamed up with another like minded soundmaker by the name of Lee Anthony Norris. The two together have conjured up a broody bit of haunting minimalist drift, one that's not that far removed from what we're discovering is a sort of "Time Released Sound SOUND", and while each band has their own distinct take on THAT sound, at its core, it's typically an ethereal, ephemeral ambience, neo-classical dronescapery that's softly psychedelic, hushed and mysterious, almost new agey at times, an electronic flecked dreaminess that blends organic and machine generated sounds into something lush and lovely. Winter's Fire though takes that TRS sound and darkens it a bit, adding an overcast patina, the sound more grey and rainswept, low tones rumbling and shimmering beneath crystalline flecks of glimmering melody, hazy swaths of voice like synth floating weightless above softly thrumming chordal swells, the sound almost choral in places, very cinematic, wistful and melancholy, a weary, washed out sprawl of delicate moody mesmerism, drifting spectrally through field recordings of rainfall, mysterious echo drenched samples, and ghostly voices, all of which seem to fade eerily into the gauzy shimmery backdrop Bolton and Norris so effortlessly weave. Fans of other Time Released Sound releases will most definitely not be disappointed, but folks into sounds darker and dronier, might just want to give this one a try, a perfect mix of hushed haunting ambience, ominous cinematic soundscaping and dark droning drift.
As with all Time Released Sound releases, Winter's Fire comes in two versions, one a pricey ultra deluxe package, and less expensive standard one. The deluxe version this time around consists of a stamped and printed page from a 100 year old apothecary's ledger, complete with all the original hand written prescriptions, the page has tiny twigs woven into it, and the whole thing is tied with antique string, to which is attached an old brass clothespin. All of that is then housed in an antiqued envelope, printed and distressed with ash, ink and pastels, then hand stamped and sealed with wax. WOW. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have but a handful. The Standard version is less limited and comes housed in a simple printed paper sleeve, slightly smudged and distressed.
While this is not new, we felt since we just listed Manuel Gottsching's essential early eighties proto-acid release E2-E4, we should revisit another essential release from the post-Ash Ra Tempel period that we never listed before. 1976's New Age of Earth was the inaugural release from Ashra, the next phase of Ash Ra Tempel which basically was Manuel Gottsching re-focusing his musical efforts from a group ambition to a solo experience, marked by more streamlined compositions involving more synthesizers and sequencers but not losing his signature cosmic guitar leads altogether. Letting go of the acid psych commune jams of Ash Ra Tempel's previous efforts, New Age of Earth enjoys a more meditative kosmiche sensibility with extended warm electronic sojourns with minimalist compositional tendencies. The opener "Sunrain" is a deliriously percolating track that sounds as if Steve Reich created a proto-Balearic slow disco jam for sunrise dancefloors in Ibiza. "Ocean of Tenderness" is a softly lilting and shifting piece marked by gentle waves of sound and floating guitar figures, while "Deep Distance" is a more contemplative and cinematic rumination on landscapes of sound. Which leads to the final piece "Nightdust", which at 21 minutes is the longest track, a gorgeously majestic build-up of cosmic sensations. Whirring pulsar synth effects over a serene new age foundation like the feel of illuminating stars over some alien planetary ocean, culminating in a searing sky-high guitar lead that propels us into the nebulous ether of oceanic space. In fact the whole album has this epic 'sci-fi beach' feel, reminiscent of that mysterious final scene from The Quiet Earth, where the last man on earth is on the beach and sees the giant planet Saturn looming in the distance. A classic cosmic krautrock release from Virgin Record's most exciting and exploratory period, New Age of Earth is essential for all fans of kraut-y space-rock and psychedelic cosmic bliss.
Ah, the many tentacles of Gordon Ashworth. Once, this Portlander recorded as Concern delivering an updated version of American holy minimalism through Riley, Maclise, and Conrad in fine style. He also had his wall-noise moniker Oscillating Innards, and plenty of black/grind/scuzz-fuck/noise projects to extend his aesthetic range (e.g. Knelt Rote, Deep Jew, etc.); but it was always the work of Concern that tickled our fancy. While he shelved Concern as a project back in 2010, this solo album released under his given name seems to be carrying on that aesthetic thread. Languid drones blur between field recordings from his one-time job as a taxi driver and subtle melodies sketched out via banjo and piano for the first couple of tracks, lend a less digital but equally favorable comparison to Tim Hecker's fizzing post-ambience. On "Suite For Broken Sex," Ashworth really hits his stride through the billowing minimalism for a hypnotic piano, churning through notes akin to Lubomyr Melnyk's less frenetic compositions, all brightly rasping with overtones and swirling raga-drones from the interlocking arpeggiation. The wistful banjo fingerpicking of "To Be The Man I Want To Be" and "Desperate & Indebted" takes on a Tim Hecker / Christian Fennesz jaggedliness adhering to the hillbilly minimalism of Henry Flynt, plucking away at a tearjerkingly maudlin series of melodies over the course of side two. Gorgeous stuff for sure! Limited to 300 copies on clear vinyl with a download.
Apparently this is the new Asian Dub Foundation record (as it features the latest single "Real Great Britain"). If not, this is certainly the first time we've seen this record. Imperialism, Marxism, and racial politics are still the driving force behind Asian Dub Foundation whose aggressive ragga drum & bass is fueled with brash Bollywood orchestral samples, big bass grooves, and sincerely impassioned rants.
This is the actualization of Edward Said's orientalist theories into a musical context of feverish drum & bass breaks compounded with a stellar use of antiquated 60's fuzz guitar and impassioned political rants. ADF makes Atari Teenage Riot's upper middle class politics seem very weak in comparison.
Along with being a 'best of' collection, this double disc set also treats Asian Dub Foundation fans to plenty of unreleased material, BBC sessions, remixes, other rare stuff, and three brand new tracks. 32 tracks in all. Gives a fantastically thorough overview of this British group's slick melting pot of hip hop, ragga, dub, breakbeat, worldbeat and more. Sure to please devotees, but might be a bit much if you're new to this group.
Up from the ashes of San Diego's Physics comes Aspects Of Physics. In the sonic experimentations that form Systems of Social Recalibration, this quintet utilized an array of synths, computers and guitars new and old that might make a gear geek quiver. The result? Seven predominantly electronic tracks that morph from flowingly celestial and crystalline to sputtering and glitchy to tenuous drones. Their combination of occasional warm guitar melodies, layers of viscous synths and considerably icier digital textures works well. Ultimately however, it's questionable if the groups's aural output lives up to their multimedia-ness, theories and creative process (check out the enclosed booklet and their website for the detailed and diagramed skinny). Pressed on almost-pure white vinyl.
This questionably monickered combo and their brilliantly titled cd come courtesy of loyal AQ customer Garrett Splain and it's a doozy. Fucked up and off kilter post-free-avant-rock with the some cool production techniques, the occasional bizarrely programmed drum machine and what sounds like vibes or a xylophone supplying far-away melodies. The recording is a bit lo-fi, but it only adds a nice kind of gritty ambience to the proceedings. Adventurous fans of Laddio Bollocko, Trans Am, Don Caballero and the like might really dig this.
Strangely referred to as "Hot 'n' Horny Taco", although it doesn't say it anywhere on the sleeve or label, nor is there any reference to tacos in this single's two focus tracks. Features vocal and instrumental versions of "Love The Pussy" on side A, wherin a woman repeatedly asks "Do You Want To Rub The Pussy, Touch The Pussy, Fuck The Pussy", and three versions of "G-String"
The king of Detroit ghetto-tech returns with seventeen new tracks of accelerated funk. Much to our disappointment, the spastic intensity which made 'Belle Isle Tech' and 'Off the Chain for the Y2K' so exciting is lost to expanded track lengths, mild and tired rhythms, and boring reiterations of old material ("Ass-N-Titties 2001?" anyone?). However, "Nipples-N-Clits" (a play on the
These UK psychedelic dronelords began life as something altogether different, for years conjuring up some mutant strain of modern minimalism, dreamily lysergic noise drenched ragas and longform avant-psych kosmische kraut-age bliss outs. At some point their sound shifted and became decidedly more electronic, transforming in some cases into actual techno, albeit a super noisy, deliriously fucked up version, but it seemed they had perhaps made the move into dance music full time. But with the last few releases, the sound seems to have been drifting back to that early sound, or perhaps more accurately, the two sides of ASC seem to have merged, creating some dizzying psychedelia that within a single song can flit from fractured techno, to glimmering, prismatic psych-noise, to full on meditative raga-drone spiritualism, that strange confluence is in full effect here.
The opener "Infinity Thug" is a wild collage of electronic bloops and bleeps and buried-in-the-mix tabla like rhythms, a cascade of distorted soft noise swirl that leads directly into the gristly cosmic sprawl of "Phantom Transmitters" that sounds a bit like the music from a planetarium light show, wreathed in a cloud of sculpted static, and draped over a soft guitar strum and softly undulating layers of buzz and thrum. And as you might have gathered from the above, after that, all bets are off - pulsing sitar like ragas drift through fields of chanting monk like vocals, pocked with electronic squelches, and spacey FX. Churning alien techno sprawls into psychedelic cosmic-kraut grooves. Billows of distant chordal shimmer drift weightlessly beneath spiritual spoken word, peppered with guitar fuzz and mysterious sonic filigree. It's a swirling sonic chaos that manages to be both noisy and psychedelic, dreamy and meditative, with fractured noisiness and jumbled melodies. The extended stretches of staticky electro-minimalism are almost like some home-brewed Raster-Noton release, at times sounding like some damaged variant of heroin house, at others like it could have been constructed from intercepted alien transmissions. And finally, there is a soft bit of spacey glimmer, that explodes into the wild bombastic psychedelic squall that is the closer "Squeegee Anthem #3", which by 9 minutes in (of 18) sounds like Burnt Hills or the Heads, doused in spaced out electronics and cosmic FX, a totally hypnotic, noise drenched, electronic flecked, heady, hard rocking, psychedelic blow out.
The record is split into THREE sides, the first two on the vinyl, the third 'side' on the included cd. But fear not, a download is included that features all three.
Astrobrite is the candy-colored, shoegaze-pop project fronted by Scott Cortez, who's better known for his snowblinded guitar driftscapes in Lovesliescrushing. At one time, Astrobrite was a trio, but Cortez soon adopted the name for his own use; this album appears to be one of the Cortez-only incarnations of Astrobrite, originally released on cd by Clair Records in 2001. For both Lovesliescrushing and Astrobrite, Cortez' guitarwork follows all the great shoegaze guitar impressionists - My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver, Ride, etc. - although both projects are the opposite sides of the same coin. Those Lovesliescrushing albums shed pretty much all of the song-structure from the classic shoegazing sound to amass endless waves of softly crushed smears of distortion and oceanic, narcotizing drones. Like Belong and Christian Fennesz, Lovesliescrushing seemed to be pondering what Kevin Shields might have done as an encore for Loveless, but within Astrobrite, Cortez indulges in pure mimesis of shoegaze bliss-pop at its finest. These blown out four-track recordings could easily be some lost set of MBV recordings circa 1989, complete with androgynous whispered vocal harmonies and whammy-bar tone bending. Given the recent retread of washed out noise-pop by way of Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Beach Fossils, a revisitation into the sugarsmacked sound of Astrobrite makes a hell of a lot of sense. Bright translucent red vinyl and a download coupon complete the package. Nice!
