Phil Mouldycliff is a British artist who we discovered through his curatorial work on the Debris Field exhibition at the Bolton Art Museum, whereby Mouldycliff presented a series of environmental / field recordings from the likes of Loren Chasse, Colin Potter, Max Eastley, Keith Rowe, and others. In presenting Written On Water for Colin Potter's ICR label, Mouldycliff drew from his many sound installations and found-sound compositions which have never been presented on cd before. He is a very restrained artist, prefering the slow and methodical unveiling of sound and structure found in the likes of Morton Feldman or Andrew Chalk. On one track, distant squelched voices with the cadence of a news broadcast set well behind a quiet trickle of subaquatic plinks and a stately selection of piano clusters. Elsewhere, Mouldycliff turns to more of a painterly New Music sensibility with clusters of horns, flutes, and piano (which might all be synthesized) into occasionally playful bursts of energy. But, Written On Water is clearly at its best when the drone is the fundamental structure; and Mouldycliff's final offering, "The Spirit Of Place," is well worth the price of admission simply on the strength of the manipulated field recordings into a breathtaking gasp of guilded string vibration which recalls the best work that Ora had generated many years ago. Niblock and Eliane Radigue would also garner nods as well to that impressive conclusion.
Like clockwork (get it? sorry...) comes another gorgeous release from local label Time Released Sound, and another disc of pastoral ambient minimalism, but unlike many of the other TRS releases, which fuse electronic and organic sounds into lush and lovely blissed out driftscapes, Richard Moult and David Colohan conjure up something much more 'classical' sounding, merging a modern classical minimalism, with the hushed brooding post rockiness of groups like Godspeed, albeit with out the slow builds and bombastic crescendos. Although these two do have some sonic tricks up their sleeves, but more on that later. For the most part Hexameron is a stately, melancholic arrangement of mostly piano, with spidery minor key guitars, the sound fleshed out with subtle percussive flourishes, swirling strings, choir like voices, the sound sweeping and cinematic, but also hushed and intimate. Fans of James Blackshaw, Lubomyr Melnyk, Anton Batagov and the like will be in heaven.
The opener is dusky and balladic, pointillist piano stretched out over a rich, lustrous low end thrum, soft streaks of subtle guitar strums drift through the shadows, a definite Bark Psychosis vibe for sure, the second track is more of the same, but the duo employ some barely noticeable studio trickery to add some subtle psychedelia to the proceedings, the guitar swooping to the fore, unfurling emotive peals of aching guitar melody, all drifting over a lush bed of softly churning thrum. As the record progresses, the sounds seem to grow less distinct, the background sounds blurrier and more washed out, notes on the piano bathed in reverb, sounding almost dubby, arcs of gently distorted guitars, often coming together into soft focus squalls of dreamnoisedrift, other times, the piano struggles to stay above the surface, as the various ambient sounds grow crunchy, and buzzy and staticky, the final track adding more distorted guitar buzz, a little fragmented glitchery, and some echo drenched skronk, over the otherwise tranquil and somber pianoscape below.
As always, the packaging is stellar, and delivered in two versions, the standard, limited to 200 copies, which houses the disc in a nicely printed full color gatefold, and the deluxe, limited to just 75 copies, which pulls out all the stops, the packaging made from pages out of a 90+ year old book, wrapped in a collaged, inked and stamped envelope, itself also housed in a hand worked outer translucent envelope. Also included are medieval drawings, a banded cd sleeve made from a page of heraldic crests, and a large double sided insert!!
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Like clockwork (get it? sorry...) comes another gorgeous release from local label Time Released Sound, and another disc of pastoral ambient minimalism, but unlike many of the other TRS releases, which fuse electronic and organic sounds into lush and lovely blissed out driftscapes, Richard Moult and David Colohan conjure up something much more 'classical' sounding, merging a modern classical minimalism, with the hushed brooding post rockiness of groups like Godspeed, albeit with out the slow builds and bombastic crescendos. Although these two do have some sonic tricks up their sleeves, but more on that later. For the most part Hexameron is a stately, melancholic arrangement of mostly piano, with spidery minor key guitars, the sound fleshed out with subtle percussive flourishes, swirling strings, choir like voices, the sound sweeping and cinematic, but also hushed and intimate. Fans of James Blackshaw, Lubomyr Melnyk, Anton Batagov and the like will be in heaven.
The opener is dusky and balladic, pointillist piano stretched out over a rich, lustrous low end thrum, soft streaks of subtle guitar strums drift through the shadows, a definite Bark Psychosis vibe for sure, the second track is more of the same, but the duo employ some barely noticeable studio trickery to add some subtle psychedelia to the proceedings, the guitar swooping to the fore, unfurling emotive peals of aching guitar melody, all drifting over a lush bed of softly churning thrum. As the record progresses, the sounds seem to grow less distinct, the background sounds blurrier and more washed out, notes on the piano bathed in reverb, sounding almost dubby, arcs of gently distorted guitars, often coming together into soft focus squalls of dreamnoisedrift, other times, the piano struggles to stay above the surface, as the various ambient sounds grow crunchy, and buzzy and staticky, the final track adding more distorted guitar buzz, a little fragmented glitchery, and some echo drenched skronk, over the otherwise tranquil and somber pianoscape below.
As always, the packaging is stellar, and delivered in two versions, the standard, limited to 200 copies, which houses the disc in a nicely printed full color gatefold, and the deluxe, limited to just 75 copies, which pulls out all the stops, the packaging made from pages out of a 90+ year old book, wrapped in a collaged, inked and stamped envelope, itself also housed in a hand worked outer translucent envelope. Also included are medieval drawings, a banded cd sleeve made from a page of heraldic crests, and a large double sided insert!!
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Last year we reviewed a disc by the evocatively named Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, who we described as "equal parts DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, seventies horror movie soundtracks, late night jazz and super sluggish blown out trip hop" which is exactly what it sounded like. Long languid musical excursions through some dark rainy late night film noir wasteland, ghostly moaning horns, skittering minimal percussion, haunting strings, all tangled into super cinematic musical drama. Another band, who if there was any justice, would be the ones scoring big Hollywood thrillers instead of Danny Elfman...
Anyway, we recently learned that the�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble had an alter ego, a more metallic dark side, called, appropriately enough The�Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, we were pretty much sold after just hearing the name, so evocative of some mysterious 'star chamber', holed up in a secret underground bunker, tucked in some cave in the mountains, where mysterious hooded figures work alchemical magic creating mysterious and monstrous 'doomjazz'...
Supposedly, this Kilimanjaro offshoot was meant to sound a bit like SUNNO))) or Earth, albeit run through with bits of jazziness and smoke-y ambience. Well, it's not quite that heavy, but it is a bit, definitely heavier and darker and more ominous than the KDJE mothership, a sort of drone-y dark ambient drift, long stretches of low tones and distant horns, of rumbling guitars and thick washes of swirling low end. Actually it sounds more like�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble with all the jazz sucked out, leaving nothing but a blackened husk, a skeletal landscape of bleak blissed out shimmer, and slow creeping nightmare melodies. In some ways it sounds like a jazzier, more ambient, less primitive and ritualistic version of the Taj Mahal Travellers... A couple tracks do rev up to a full on SUNNO)))-y dirge, with the guitars threatening to engulf the dark ambience beneath it, but they never truly explode into actual sludge drenched doom, instead, they sort of drift darkly, roiling like a sky full of thick black clouds... It is most definitely doomy though, just not in the traditional sense, the sounds here are more Lustmord, Nordvargr, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Cold Meat Industries, with some more melancholy melody mixed in, disembodied reverbed guitar, the occasional almost-jazzy creep, it's more a sort of ambient slow core, wait a minute, "slowcore ambient doom" might be exactly the descriptor we were searching for.�
Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, or anyone into�slowcore ambient doom!
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Working under his Mount Vernon Arts Lab guise, Drew Mulholland had the good fortune to perform alongside Coil at the Megalithomania festival in London, thoroughly impressing them with his drug addled electronic psychedelia, so much so that Coil offered to put out an album. Mulholland showed his appreciation by referencing Coil's legendary dabbling in occult magick in his choice of the slightly altered mystical moniker Mount Vernon Astral Temple as well as within the music itself, producing Musick That Destroys Itself as ritualist pieces centered around occult numerology, which as far as we can tell has something to do with the palindrome of the date February 2, 2002, and a purported 'time machine' which exists in the Brompton cemetary(!). If you've dug Coil's recent experiments with analog synths or the tripped out, ring modulator work-outs of Acid Mother's Temple, Mount Vernon Astral Temple's cosmic jams of dense electronic percolations and gaping reverberations will definitely be the perfect soundtrack for your next pagan ritual or secret ceremony! Strictly limited to 1000 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest disc of pastoral dreamlike synthdrone ambience from this East coast duo, whose past records have been unanimous aQ faves, as this one is fast becoming as well. Every track here is a mini epic of slow building drones and lushly layered textures, the sound rich and full, strings buzzing, synths shimmering, sometimes stretched out for ages, but often blossoming into sun dappled Technicolor bursts of sweet sonic radiance, sparkling and glimmering, just as often wrangled into pulses, and crafted into weirdly sc-fi synthscapes, borrowing a page from the book of all the Carpenter/Goblin worshippers out there, but instead of creating some futuristically retro Euro disco, those pulses are blurred and layered, and turned into something more along the lines of Tangerine Dream, hazy and gauzy and deeply melodic and almost new agey.
Elsewhere the duo wreath their hushed high end drift in thick swaths of hiss and hum, creating Tim Hecker like landscapes of bleary eared ambience, all pixelated and indistinct, a soft focus shimmer, but Mountains add streaks of synths, again making it sound more like classic new age/krautrock than modern experimentation.
The second half of the record is heavy on the pulsing synths, simple lilting melodies, repeated, looped, layered, conjuring up mesmerizing chunks of electronic minimalism, that definitely look to Reich, and Riley, as well as Fripp and Eno, but in the hands of Mountains, at times much noisier, the sound more dense, but that warm glowing melodic sense always shining through. The record closes with a thick swath of warm whirring buzz, tangled melodies beneath think swirls of whir and thrum, crumbling synths, which fade out during the last few seconds, to reveal a guitar, which may very well have been in there all along.
Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp are the men behind these Mountains. The two met in Chicago in 1999 and now live in Brooklyn; yet despite their urban living, Mountains long for the great outdoors. The big sky of Montana. The thunderclouds of the Arizona high desert. The forests of upstate New York. In their effortless blur of elliptically strummed acoustic guitars and elegantly sculpted ambience, Mountains celebrate the natural world, as leaves, rain, dirt, and snow all seem to speak through their beautifully monochromatic compositions.
Choral happens to be Mountains third full album and their first for Thrill Jockey. It also stands as their best album to date and even surpasses the almost universally beloved Field Rituals solo album by Holtkamp on Type. The brightly rendered guitar which gilded Holtkamp's solo record features prominently in the mix for Choral, but it has been tempered with gaseous effects and post-shoegazing processes that swaddle the guitar chords with equally rich drones and electrified mist. Melodica, analog synth, piano, hand bells, something that sounds like a hurdy gurdy, even more guitar, and found object scrabbing a la Jewelled Antler make their way through the soft focus blur of the digital treatments, which give evidence for comparisons in equal measure to Fennesz and Cluster. As the shimmering tones of finger-picked guitars trickle out of the slow pulsing drone of the title track, Mountains conjure images of the bright orange sunlight saturating wind-blown leaves at sunset. Halos of light burst around each glistening layer of sound, but there is a bittersweet aura to many of the melodies that slip beyond their transcendent ambience, as if the summer sun they portray in their songs is soon to be lost to the blustery winds of Autumn and the cold nights of Winter. The maudlin atmospheres continue on the insistent acoustic guitar chords of "Telescope," a near perfect bliss-out instrumental, on through the broken-hearted bells and deep tonal flutter of "Melodica."
If there's any justice, this will be universally hailed as one of the best records of 2009. And for vinyl freeks: the lp version of Choral enjoys two additional tracks not found on the cd!
WOW marks the second album this year (2012) from the German duo Mouse On Mars, and it's jam packed with ideas, detours, and mutations of their already genre-bending take on electronica. The opening track is graced by a yelping vocalist who's a cross between Damo Suzuki and Eye Yamataka; and such histrionics only occur in a couple of a places dotting the record with barked syllabic utterances. The blorping electronics that spills out of this intro morph into a Zomby (that's the Zomby with a Y, not the Zombi with a Carpenter / Goblin crush) re-animation of dub-step dripping with colorful tones and oddball rhythmic inventions. Elsewhere, Mouse On Mars cut their teeth with some sci-fi / futuristic R&B synth stabs that might as well have their origins in the Personal Space compilation from Chocolate Industries, and mercurially twist those into acid house trax blossoming through squelchy glissandos and operatic vocals with occasional blurts from that Suzuki-esque madman. Quite the wild ride!
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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.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
AS we mentioned elsewhere on this list, we were a bit put off by a rather blah live performance from these two Brooklyn based noise makers, but on record we're definitely digging them more and more. Two side-long epic noise jams, some transcendental long form psychsludge ur-drone of the highest order. Think Skullfower, Total, a definite Bower-ish wall of droning sound vibe, but with a thicker, grittier heaviness, that just sort of churns and roils like it's about to spill over and burn everyone alive. Not sure if guitars are the main musical implement but it sure does sound like guitar after guitar after guitar, thicker and heavier and noisier. Pretty dang great.
Hand screened covers. LIMITED TO 350 COPIES. Each copy is hand numbered as well and includes an insert.
An unlikely freerock avantnoise match up that works a whole lot better than it should. It's hard to tell if each band got a side, or if they are collaborating on together the whole way through, hardly matters really, as both sides are pretty dang great. Recorded live in 2004, this collaboration definitely brings out the softer side in Mouthus, the whole thing is dreamy and droney, the two exploring some dark drifting ambient exploration. One side is a slow builder, gradually growing in intensity as the soft swirl grows into a near static raga, a wall of warm buzz, while the other side is much more guitar heavy, a huge soundscape of rumbling riffage and soaring high end shimmer.
Packaged in a super striking yellow and white collages sleeve, with a full color insert.
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES!!!!!
It's been a while since we've heard from Move D after a number of releases for Warp, Fax, and Source in the mid '90s. Here, Move D (real name David Moufang) has hooked up with writer / musician Thomas Meinecke for an album "committed to deconstructive feminism." With slowly looping drones, pulses of electronic static, and various academic texts of "political discourse on the discontent of the sexes," this album starts out quite nicely, recalling the information theoretics of the Hafler Trio. But then things goes jazz. On the same label that brought us that great Philip Jeck double cd.
We've had some cd-r evidence a while back pointing to the existence of some mighty black beast, trolling the midnight forests of the New Zealand wilds, the thing they call Mrtyu, some say it's a man, but what kind of man can spew forth such a noxious cacophony? Some say it is a demon from the depths of hell, unleashed after centuries of incarceration in some hellish underground lair, but how did a demon learn to play a guitar and use a 4 track? We've been led to believe however that Mrtyu is actually the musical Mr. Hyde to one Antony Milton's Dr. Jeckyll. What proof do we have? The cd-r label Pseudo Arcana, run by an entity known as Antony Milton, Nether Dawn, a group fronted by a shadowy figure possibly also Mr. Milton, and then there are of course a couple previous cd-r releases, which are now known to be the work of one Antony Milton. This double disc collection gathers up all existing evidence, including previous releases as well as a brand new previously unreleased sonic document. Why the hubbub? Well, friends, it could be that Mrtyu offer up some of the darkest, blackest, heaviest sounds south of Heaven? That to trudge through Mrtyu's sonic world is a journey to the brink of madness? Perhaps, but the best way to truly understand the fury and glory of the mighty Mrtyu is to listen. Each track a blast of primitive power, each with it's own unique sonic energy. Sheets of shimmering feedback drift over crumbly rumbling super distorted guitar background noise. Very static and raga-like, quite reminiscent of Total or Skullflower. A lo-fi doom dirge, with jagged brittle guitars, distorted vocals (not howls or shrieks, but like indie crooning, all 'distorted' up). A brief blast of Melvins-y sludge but with the high end pushed into the red. Almost like a indie pop song, but deconstructed and dipped in stoner sludge. A bit of Sunroof!, a bit of Angus Maclise, a lush shimmering drone, with peals of feedback and throbbing smears of downtuned guitar, all tangled into a gorgeously static thrum. Drones cloaked in black, damaged and druggy, ultra distorted guitars, so downtuned and blown out it sounds like some sort of tectonic event, the guitars form the framework for a truly oppressive atmosphere, a swirl of black clouds and Butthole Surfers-esque feedback, while atop it all, a demonic voice intones and howls and squeals like a rusted hinge. Think Khanate meets Abruptum, but filtered through than NZ noize aesthetic. A howling hellish musical journey through the fires of hell, trudging across pits of black pitch, being dragged bloody and screaming through dark demon infested forests. So harsh and beautifully bilious, drones become dirges, dirges become drones, everything cloaked in black and swathed in buzz.
Bow supplicant, pray for forgiveness, wish for survival, bathe in the blood from your ringing ears. All hail Mrtyu.
These musical missives come housed in a hand screened green and blue, three panel cardstock sleeve, adorned with all manner of pagan and tribal imagery, quite striking!
(Psst... the artwork on the discs got swapped at the plant, so the disc marked DISC 1 actually contains the music from disc 2 and vice versa. Just the demon Mrtyu messing with our heads wethink!)
The last time we heard from Mrtyu, was a cd on Campbell Kneale's experimental metal label Battlecruiser. It was quite the heavy and noisy affair, a head on collision between Skullflower / Total style free skree and throbbing sludgy dirgey doom. And obviously we loved it. Only later did we discover that Mrtyu was none other than Mr. Antony Milton, infamous NZ noisenik and head honcho of the PseudoArcana cd-r label. This is the first full length from Milton and his Mrtyu, and if anything, the sound of Mrtyu has gotten more metal, or at the very least more HEAVY, but without sacrificing the drone element. The first track still channels a bit of Sunroof!, a bit of Angus Maclise, a lush shimmering drone, with peals of feedback and throbbing smears of downtuned guitar, all tangled into a gorgeously static thrum. The second track though finds Mrtyu cloaked in black and playing a much blacker music than before, crumbling, ultra distorted guitars, so down tuned and blown out it sounds like some sort of tectonic event, the guitars form the framework for a truly oppressive atmosphere, a swirl of black clouds and Butthole Surfers-esque feedback, while atop it all, a demonic voice intones and howls and squeals like a rusted hinge. Think Khanate meets Abruptum, but filtered through than NZ noize aesthetic. The rest of the disc is follows a similar path, a howling hellish musical journey through the fires of hell, trudging across pits of black pitch, being dragged bloody and screaming through dark demon infested forests. So harsh and beautifully bilious, drones become dirges, dirges become drones, everything cloaked in black and swathed in buzz.
Latest bit of obscure musical alchemism from the mysterious cave dwelling horde known simply as Mrtyu, but around here, also known as Antony Milton, head honcho of the Pseudo Arcana label, and the man behind numerous musical endeavors we dig BIG time: Street, Nether Dawn, Claypipe, With Throats As Fine As Needles, The Stumps, we could go on and on...
Mrtyu was always Milton's outlet for his darker side, a sort of blackened drone metal behemoth, never full committing the the black buzz, always sort of skirting the grim true BM sound, taking elements of that sound and fusing it to his more abstract, folky dronemusic, the results invariably kick ass. On this latest slab, the Mrtyu sound is markedly different, for all the noise and skree and buzz and general heaviness, it's also probably the prettiest Mrtyu yet. As if the ever raging battle between his folkier dronier 'good' side and his buzzier sludgier 'bad' side, has finally tipped to the side of good. But not too good, fear not.
Unlike some of the more grim noise drenched rituals of the past, the first side could almost be one of Milton's other projects. Sure there's plenty of guitar skree, sheets of feedback, and dense layers of soft chaos, but beneath it all lurk gorgeous lilting melodies, each avalanche of crumbling distortion can barely disguise the weirdly pretty, woozy, spidery, dreamy melodies within. Swirled smears of muted buzz wrap around delicate jangle and simple strum, dense cacophonous walls of sound tumble beneath crystalline chordal streaks.
It's not until the B side that things get seriously heavy. A gorgeous little Middle Eastern sounding tangle of melodies drifts over a soft layer of muted feedback, the strings sawed intensely, then suddenly, a buzzy blown out riff comes in, locked and looped, a mesmerizing lurching groove beneath the ever intensifying tangle of melodies, a twisted metallic Easter drone raga (or something) that could have taken up the whole record and we would have been psyched. Thankfully it takes up half of the second side.
The record finishes off with more abstract blackened folkiness, vocals enter the fray, a weird effected mewl, over rumbling distortion and shards of feedback, more squiggly little melodies, and some warm almost tranquil sounding guitar shimmer underneath.
Perhaps not so much for the weirdo metal obsessives anymore, this Mrtyu record will probably find a home with the more avant folk / abstract drone / free noise freaks, although truly adventurous metalheads should definitely not be dissuaded.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in hand screened linen paper sleeves. NICE!
Mrtyu is Antony Milton's musical Mr. Hyde, allowing him to weave blackened musickal rituals, and strange downtuned noise drenched dronedoom when he's not creating gorgeous soundscapes, crafting jangly pop, or keeping the underground alive with his PseudoArcana label. Ritual Terra Continuii is not as doomy as some of the other Mrtyu releases, but it's still plenty dark and scary. Disembodied vocals drift amidst slithering low end riffing, bells and chimes drift on thick swells of squealing feedback, everything a glorious murky lo-fi crawl. Dripping with distortion, a lurching lope through some damaged wasteland of sound. Crumbling walls of guitar buzz, bent strings, minor key melodies, simple music box percussion, and that voice, like Whitehouse being broadcast through a tin can and twine, barely audible through the sheets of gloom and mire. So good.
Killer blood splattered hand painted tape in a cryptic black and white sleeve, with a black and white insert, and a folded up short story printed on super nice textured paper. LIMITED TO 120 COPIES!!!
Finally, a new release from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) 'metal' label Battlecruiser. This time from the cryptically named Mrtyu. And upon first listen, not all that metal. Not to say that it's not good, it is. Really good. It just sounds like it might have been just at home on Kneale's more drift / drone / freenoise oriented label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Sheets of shimmering feedback drift over crumbly rumbling super distorted guitar background noise. Very static and raga-like, quite reminiscent of Total or Skullflower. But then track two hits and we understand why this is a Battlecruiser release. A lo-fi doom dirge, with jagged brittle guitars, distorted vocals (not howls or shrieks, but like indie crooning, all 'distorted' up). A brief blast of Melvins-y sludge but with the high end pushed into the red. Almost like a indie pop song, but deconstructed and dipped in stoner sludge. Cool. And SUPER LIMITED. We only got 15 and will not be able to get more.
Courtesy of Mr Campbell Kneale and his impressive Celebrate Psi Phenomena label comes the latest snarling beast of a record from Japan's MSBR. One thirty minute track of NOISENOISENOISE. Harsh electronic wall of sound. Sharp and severe, thick and impenetrable. MSBR fans and Merbowmaniacs might want to check this out. Gorgeously packaged as are all of CPP's limited cd-rs.
Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper are two Portland-based multimedia artists who have collaborated over the past six or seven years in various guises, first being the Oregon Painting Society, which was a loose collective that also included Matt Carlson (of Golden Retriever and Bonus) and Barbara Kinzle (of The Slaves with Birch Cooper). MSHR (pronounced 'mesher') has been the main project for Murphy and Cooper for a couple of years now, with the duo garnering installations and performances at such high profile venues as the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in San Francisco and the Transmediale Festival in Berlin. Murphy's sculptural elements appear as some weird hybrid of Thai architecture and sci-fi futurism affixed to a latticework of mirrored surfaces and backlit illumination; and Cooper's hand-built electronics are often interwoven into the sculptural elements, activated in part by motion and light sensors. Their performances can appear to be a kaleidoscopic / libertine explosion of circuit bent squiggliness and saw-tooth wave acceleration, that has its sonic aesthetics which bridge the gap between Nautical Almanac's day-glo / haywired electro-blurt and Francoise Bayle's pioneering freeform sampledelic research at INA-GRM. Limited to 100 copies, and it is extremely unlikely that we will be able to get more once these are gone.
We first heard the oddly named Mudboy on Last Visible Dog's recent mammoth six-cd Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box. Curiousity thus piqued, we're pleased to now find a Mudboy full-length cd has now also just been released by LVD (actually, this is a reissue of a recording previously put out by an even smaller label). This Rhode Island feller's woozy music, performed with home-built electronics and modified vintage keyboards (a circuit-bent church organ we're told), would be the perfect soundtrack to a creepy, sleepy sort of imaginary movie... this cd's full of ominous drones and sinister synth but it's also soothingly repetitive and goshdarn lovely. Whooshing interludes bridge the spaced out explorations of minor-key organ melodies that permeate the disc, occasionally infiltrated by field recordings and broken rhythmic glitch. It's an atmosphere of menace that's strangely warm and inviting. If Bo Hansson's ghost made Halloween music, or down on his luck Eric Malmberg (keyboardist of Sagor & Swing) was hired to play a lullabies for a monster baby...they'd sound a bit like Mudboy, perhaps. And if "this is folk music", then Cluster and John Carpenter are folk music too, 'cause Mudboy seems to be inspired by both kraut-tronics and analog fright flick scores. And we're ready to snuggle up with that monster baby...
Wow. We just did the math, and the four members of Mudsuckers, Pete and Gabe from the Yellow Swans, Tom Carter from Charalambides, and Robert Horton, have between the four of them, released over 27,000 cd-r's. Or at least it seems like it. We're not complaining though (okay, maybe we are a little since we seem to constantly be scrambling to get all of these guys' records reviewed) 'cuz pretty much everything we've heard, we've dug, a lot. The Mudsuckers sounds a bit like an extension of the Yellow Swans, so any YS obsessive who have been hankering might do well to grab this right now. Horton and Carter seem to have dived right in, contributing their own bits of thick murky sound to the melee, the first half of the disc is dense with thick swirls of muddy guitar grrr, blown out synth, and lots of Crash Worshiping drum damage, about midway through, the sound is stretched out, still murky and muddy, but much more glistening and sparkly, hiss and fuzz and buzz and whir all shined up real pretty and let loose to drift dreamily. The second to last track features some tortured Jandekian guitar, whose angular riffing gradually melts into thick pools of dirgey drone. The final 16 minute closer, is a slow building wall of N.O.I.S.E., starting out delicate and dark, but growing into a hissy beast, but close listening reveals all sorts of melodic action and rhythmic shuffling beneath the surface of the Mudsuckers' roiling and caustic sonic sea. Nice!
This collaboration between notable electronic improvisors Gunter Mueller (adding selected percussion), Voice Crack (cracked everyday electronics), and Erik M (turntables) are white-hot sound constructions which extend from slicing drone work to layered blasts of noise. Fans of Otomo Yoshihide's recent work should take note!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Don't know too much about Jon Mueller. Other than he plays in Collections Of Colonies Of Bees (who we know very little about, except that Jon Mueller is in the band), sometimes rocks his axe with Rhys Chatham, and more importantly has offered up a seriously kick ass slab of avant guitarism for his installment in Table Of The Elements' new guitar series of one sided etched 12"s.
Mueller lays down a looped stuttery riff, but more than stutter, it skips, a grinding chug, every three or four seconds, locked into a super hypnotic mesmerizing loop. The effect is spaced out and trippy, and not a little bit hypnotic. The spaces between are filled with a weird buzzing rattling sound, which if we're not mistaken, is the a snare drum vibrating sympathetically,
It takes a little while, but eventually that background buzz gets louder and louder until a second guitar joins in offering up a chiming melodic counterpoint to that static central riff. All of a sudden, everything drops out, leaving just a strange haunting little high end interlude, feedback and squawky squeaky abstract guitar noodling, before the main riff kicks back in all machine like and intense, locking immediately back into that buzz drenched anti-groove which plays out until the end.
It doesn't necessarily grab you all at once, but once your ears and your brain lock on, you are hooked, and want it to go on forever and ever and ever.
Pressed on thick clear vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass Savage Pencil etching, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!
There's just something about when amazing drummers/percussionists go it alone, those experiments and explorations can produce such adventurous and wonderful sounds. Lately we found ourselves spending LOTS of time with Glen Kotche of Wilco's solo records so weird, enchanting and diverse. And this solo outing by avant garde percussionist Jon Mueller is further proof that despite being the butt of many rock 'n' roll jokes, talented drummers and percussionist just might be the most innovative and creative musicians of them all. Mueller, has played with groups like Collection Of Colonies Of Bees and the Bon Iver side project, Volcano Choir, but it's on this, his Type full length where is creative prowess really comes bursting forth. With influences as wide ranging as Steve Reich's outstanding album Drumming, aQ fave Moondog, gamelan, Tibetan Buddhist rites, and even the creeping ambient elements of black/dark metal, The Whole is a fully realized excursion into the possibilities of percussion.
The lp version comes with a bonus cd, featuring 30 minutes of extra material NOT on the album proper.
Jon Mueller's career as a percussionist began in the early '90s after studying jazz with Hal Russell and steadily marching into the territory of avant-garde improvisation. One of the many projects Mueller has embarked upon is the Collection of Colonies of Bees, which also features Jim Schoenecker, Mueller's partner in crime for The Interview. With a cyclical build of scraping cymbal sonorities, Mueller is the one to speak first, which perhaps makes him the interviewer and Schoenecker the interviewee as he responds with a series of tinnitus-inducing set of tones. The gravitational pull of minimalism is only so strong on The Interview, as the glistening drones and delicate scrapes from the two musicians continuously detour after abrupt changes and erratic sinewave tweakings. Mueller and Schoenecker steadily build the muffled tappings, low-end throbbing phase patterns, and shattered piercings into a detached, cold crescendo of shortwired electronics before collapsing into a restrained fizzing of activity. Phew.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Geoff Mullen, a string picker and dronelord, released two amazing records over the last few years, both huge favorites around here. Both�thrtysxtrllnmnfstns and The Air In Pieces were gorgeous, slow unfolding collections of buzzing strings and slow burning ambience. Mullen's instrument of choice was the banjo, and on thrtysxtrllnmnfstns he twisted and stretched that instrument into new and amazing shapes, whereas�The Air In Pieces found Mullen exploring even more abstract territory, smearing and blurring the source material until it was unrecognizable.�
But on�Armory Radio, his brand new vinyl only double lp, he's exploring a whole new world of sound. Expansive and epic and abstract, but dense and heavy, and thick with sound, intense noisy, busy soundscapes, fuzzed out and droning, buzzy and washed out. A similar vibe as folks like Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Aidan Baker, Dialing In and Axolotl...
But where those folks take their piece of music and leave it out in the rain, recording it through a dusty window onto a wax cylinder, played back on a tin can and twine, evoking faded memories, old photographs, rainy twilights, foggy mornings, everything bleary eyed and soft focus, Mullen's Armory Radio is a much more intense and sonically aggressive proposition. Beneath the fuzz and whir, the layers of grit and glitch, there aren't just simple pop songs hidden underneath or muted melodies blurred and buzzed, there's a whole world of sound, chunks of field recordings, bits of melody, huge sweeping drones, epic, slow sprawls of shimmer, of dark and light, strange arrangements fall to pieces and somehow reassemble often in completely different order then before they crumbled, or pieces from some crumbled melody will be swept up by a wash of whirling low end, and tangled up into some new, more alien melody.�
Armory Radio begins�with a burst of grinding fuzz, a dense slab of furious grinding thrum, which quickly gives way to softer�squalls of glitched out buzz, warm throbbing sonic stormclouds, everything in a constant state of motion, chaotic and unmoored, but with little threads that connect all four sidelong pieces. This is�definitely a noise record, but SOFT noise, thick and corrosive, but with soft edges, like stepping into the eye of a hurricane, watching all sorts of shapes and sounds spinning around you, a grinding, thick morass of constantly shifting crunch and crumble, of�billowy soft smears, all barely obscuring a mysterious and impossible to fully grasp world of beauty beneath. So good.�
LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!! Pressed on thick 140 gram vinyl, packaged in super deluxe sleeves, all hand-screened, hand-stamped and numbered.�
Latest from this experimental axeman, master dronologist and long time aQ fave, after a clutch of seriously epic and amazing releases that found Mullen dragging his guitar into mysterious musical realms, similar to the sonic otherworlds of fellow sound manipulators like Tim Hecker, Christian Fennesz, William Basinski, Aidan Baker and the like.
In fact, much like the records that came before, one would be forgiven for assuming there were no guitars at all on the misleadingly playfully named Bongo Closet, instead, these extended pieces pulse and rumble and smolder, the manipulated and recontextualized guitars melded to old synths, only to blossom into haunting dreamscapes of murky buzz and rhythmic drift, the opener sounds a bit like some obscure krautdrone jam via Chain Reaction, a sort of heroin house dream drone, while the following track, melds chiming streaks of high end, and haunting backward swoops, to a glitched out almost tribal sounding rhythm, sonar pings demarcating a strange underwater sounding bit of twisted synth drift.
Not long after, the record returns to the dark droning, fuzz drenched melancholy of the opening track, fields of muted glitch and cascading sheets of electrical shimmer are draped over softly shifting glacial melodies, a haunting minimal moonlit blur creates a strangely ominous and foreboding variant of new age, which leads directly into a stretch of twang flecked ghost-dub, echoey melodies splinter and fragment, the various bits drifting over a sea of softly crumbling distortions and tinkling chimes.
The record winds down with a cloud of warm whirling psychedelia, a gauzy indistinct sprawl of layered soft skree, and whirring slow motion warble, all blurred and smoothed into a soporifically undulating dirgescape, a little bit post industrial crumble, a little bit late night bleary eared haze, until finally, the record finishes off with a sepia toned Jeckian dronescape of warped distorted melody, and crumbling atmosphere, a gorgeous bit of dreamlike drift, of hushed melancholy melody, nearly obscured by its thick patina of smoldering glitchy buzz, and a glowing halo of blown out, in-the-red, softly psychedelic thrum. So so nice. Fans of any of the above mentioned artists, who have yet to check out Mullen, don't wait a second longer.
Dronologist and sometime string plucker Geoff Mullen, whose fantastic thrtysxtrllnmnfstns we so recently highlighted, is back already with his 2nd full-length compact disc, this time on the Last Visible Dog label, which makes perfect sense. Maybe murkier and even more abstract (we're pretty sure he's playing guitar, but we don't hear any back-porch banjo here) than his debut, The Air In Pieces features eight tracks, each one for the most part a gentle, slowly unfolding ballet of dense, deep drones and whispering vibrations from below. It's the music of subterranean behemoths, Lustmord-like whale calls, sleeping, dreaming, but very physically present. Material that could perhaps be spooky, but in Mullen's hands all this low-register distortion is bent towards light-filled blissfulness. We're very pleased. Two for two for Mr. Mullen, and neither record really sounds entirely like the other.
Want to hear a wonderful "glitch-banjo-drone" recording? This is it! New Englander Geoff Mullen's impressive debut album thrtysxtrllnmnfstns is a homemade electro-acoustic soundscape of steel strings and swarms of lovely abstract drones, made with guitar, banjo, electronics and amplification. Geoff plays broken-down, Takoma-esque American Primitive fingerpicking style, rambling over a bed of insectlike buzz and stuttering static. Melodic figures drift in and out, his old tyme instrumentation often receding fully into the misty fascination of the crackly drone-zone he's created... warm and fuzzy and alien and really pleasant! Back porch folk electronic textures, both soothing and mysterious. Recommended, 'specially to fans of Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Loren Chasse, Tim Hecker -- and John Fahey at his most experimental. (Probably P. Jeck and Wm. Basinski too, though this isn't as looped-sounding.)
Cool packaging, including in lieu of regular cd booklet, a hand-sewn fabric pouch containing a few random photos.
A private pressing from Keith Fullerton Whitman of a live recording of a collaboration with Geoff Mullen back in 2006, through the Uppercase Sound series that Brendan Murray curated in Somerville, MA. While both of these avantniks have been known for their heady guitar-driven dronesmears, this mostly finds the two grappling with all of the filters, oscillators, pedals, and electronics that can be crammed into a suitcase. Guttural renderings of pink noise, refracted vibration, and Derbyshire punctuations of tonal electronics slide in and out of rhythmically tapped structures amidst indeterminately placed squiggles and LFO sweepings. Much of the electronics mirror a deep-space, cosmic exploration although the 'recorded in the middle of the room' quality of the recording somewhat tempers any transcendent qualities. Well, it WAS recorded in the middle of a room. And yes, they did bring their guitars; and Mullen provides some choice moments of narcotized strums cast through heavy amounts of delay, which combined with Whitman's somber tone-bent electronics foreshadows the industrial psychedelia of Emeralds or Infinity Window. Each LP comes with a slightly different cover, with each featuring a still from the video documentation of the event, or something similar. In any case, it's limited to 300 copies... and give it about ten to fifteen years, this soon to be out-of-print document might just show up as a Creel Pone cd-r. Ha!
A new batch of Upstairs cd-r's means a whole bunch of cool spaced out synthy weirdness, which makes sense as Upstairs is the microlabel run by Daniel Lopatin, the man who is also sometimes known as Oneohtrix Point Never.
Geoff Mullen and Keith Fullerton Whitman are both long time aQ faves, but even so, they seemed like a weird choice for an Upstairs cd-r, since the label tends toward lo-fi synth obscurities, but the duo have worked together in the past, and in those collaborations displayed a propensity for space-y sounds, some Radiophonic Workshop bleeps and bloops, cosmic electronics, swirling supernova squiggles, all of which are in full effect here, woven into weirdly propulsive krautdrones, or infused into some skittery minimal thump and shuffle, while the tracks sprawl and ooze and expand into dubbed out abstract blurscapes, laced with sci-fi streaks of planetarium ambience, wrapped around starfields of glitch and crunch, slow burning Blade Runner ballads, loping synthy swirls blurred into otherworldly edge of the universe, celestial sub atomic dreamscapes, a gorgeous space-y bit of electronic bliss. Lovely indeed.
LIMITED TO LESS THAN 100 COPIES. We got a bunch, but these will most likely go pretty quick so grab one while you can.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You really can't go wrong with improv/experimental percussionist Gunter Muller and his various projects. Here he teams up with fellow percussionist Le Quan Ninh (who I'm sorry to say we don't know much about) and together they produce a 75 minute (edited down from 4 recorded hours) jumble of electronics and percussion, a busy aquarium of sound to be immersed in. This disc's title references a book called "Water And Dreams" by some French philosopher, and I can see how they felt that was appropriate. Gunter plays his "selected drums", Minidiscs & electronics, L� Quan Ninh utilizes "surrounded bass drum" & electronics.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Happenin' German free-improv go-getter Gunter Muller (on electronics, Minidiscs, and what I'm always amused that he likes to call "selected" percussion) again teams up with the fantabulous Japanese gutiarist Taku Sugimoto (someone my ears sometimes mistake for David Grubbs). Previously they collaborated with Keith Rowe on the "The World Turned Upside Down" cd. Quiet, sparse, beautiful.
An electronic improv scrape-scape from world reknowned sonic experimentalists Otomo Yoshihide (electric guitar, turntables, electronics) and Gunter Muller (iPod, minidisc, electronics, and of course 'selected' percussion). Yay iPod!
The duo conjure tones and drones that are quiet, textured, well-paced, and pleasing. Pretty, even. There's unspecified twitter and glitch that could be guitar notes or field recordings of forest birdsounds, or both, and probably is.
Erstwhile has become the most reliable label out there for wonderfully detailed, abstract modern free improv stuff that incorporates electronics as much as it does "regular" instruments. So of course this neither Muller nor Otomo's first appearance on Erstwhile.
Final pressing!! It's taken a long while to get enough of these in stock to list, as they've flown out the door since we started stocking it back in June, and then our distributors kept being sold out of it. Makes a lot of sense that folks have been freaking out over this, as the sounds on Science Of The Sea are some of the most blissed out sounds we've ever heard.
Originally recorded in 1982 (there is debate over that, we will get to that later) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat. The sounds on the album undoubtedly talk to the sounds and feeling of the sea. You not only feel like your floating but often that you are underwater yourself. With soft waves glowing in their ripple, as such warm shimmering sounds come gliding out of the grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album.
While some doubt has been risen as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artists, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!
What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!
Long before local garage rockers Thee Oh Sees were Thee Oh Sees, they were in fact called the OCS (need proof? Check out the double cd on tUMULt!), and were a much different beast, a duo, equal parts bedroom folk and abstract experimental noisiness, the duo at that point was made up of John Dwyer and Patrick Mullins. At some point, Mullins left, Dwyer expanded his 2 piece OCS into the 4 piece Oh Sees and the rest is history. Mullins went East, became a baker, but kept recording, and Don't Go To Sleep is the result.
A haunting collection of fractured meandering abstract soundscapes, dreamlike drones, and constantly shifting textures, from twisted dark electronics-laced folk to minimal musique concrete, to deep swirling dronemusic, to blissed out soft noise, all assembled from field recordings, electronics, effects, guitar and musical saw.
The opener is lovely, sounding a bit like Scott Tuma jamming with Whitehouse, a high end electronic pulse laced over delicate slow-mo Appalachia, hypnotic and alien, but so mysteriously beautiful. That's the sound that grounds most of the record, with Mullins constantly returning to that sort of woozy softly psychedelic glitchy electronic folk. But in between, the record constantly shifts gears, from pure field recordings, voices, and insects, thunderstorms, to drone-y minimal electronics, lushly layered yet raw and primitive, from blown out hazy Tim Hecker like blurscapes, to thick corrosive downtuned minimal doomdrone churn, to fields of gauzy drift, rife with buried melody and muted guitar strum, to glitched out digital crunch, to barely there ambient shimmer, finally culminating in the lengthy close, which begins as a hushed thrum, only to expand into a strange soundscape seemingly constructed from the sounds of rushing water, processed into textural smears, and laid over lush deep chordal swells. So nice!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
