A five song follow up to the recent Pale Sketcher full length, on which Justin Broadrick, aka Pale Sketcher, re(or de) mixed tracks by Jesu, also Broadrick, whose record Pale Sketches was a collection of, well, sonic sketches for songs that never became proper Jesu jams.
SO yeah, it was basically Broadrick covering Broadrick, and like we mentioned in the review of that first Pale Sketcher, the sound was really not all that far removed from Jesu, less heavy, a little more electronic, but for the most part still that same sort of loping M83 retro shoegaze doom pop vibe. Just less doom pop, and more electronic. But on these tracks, the distinction does definitely become more clear, this is first and foremost electronica, skittery and shuffly and dubby, the first track retains some sun dappled fuzzed out dreaminess, and still displays a distinctly Broadrick-y beat, but it's pretty great, a thick fuzzy bit of electro dub pop, which gives way to a thick cloud of whirring shimmer, only to transform into some hazy clubby dubstep. Fat wobbly basslines and disembodied reverb vocals drift overt the looped rhythm.
"Resonanz Therapie Musik" is an awesome slab of murky Chain Reaction style heroin house, wreathed in crackle, a series of warm washed out melodic swells, all driven by a murky 4 on the floor pulse, super hypnotic and darkly dreamy. The title track sounds like Jesu reimagined as an eighties roller skate rink anthem, all big beats, chopped and stuttery sampled vox, in fact it sounds a bit like a more dance floor friendly Field, the same sort of mesmerizing repetition, and vocals transformed into melodies. And finally, King Midas Sound try their hand at remixing Pale Sketcher (and thus also remixing Jesu), and it's just about as good as you'd imagine, a lurching, low slung, Portishead-y groove, all thick with grit and crackle, the female vocals distorted and echoey, drifting over thick undulating basslines, and fuzzy foghorn blasts of synth, the whole track creepy and ominous and gorgeously groove, with some buzzing dubstep bass and some cinematic strings, makes us think there should be a whole record of Broadrick / KMS collabs. If only...
Charlemagne Palestine has long been one of the pioneers of American Minimalism, tracing back to his '60s performances that rivalled Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Tony Conrad in duration, intensity, and transcendent potential. "Maximin" finds Palestine working with David Coulter and Jean-Marie Mathoul to re-intepret / re-mix / re-iterate (or how ever you care to catagorize it). For the most part, Palestine contributed material from his albums "Jamaica Heinekens In Brooklyn," "Schlongo!!!daLUVdrone," and "Karenina," while Coutler and Mathoul added additional drones, found sound textures, illbient breakbeats, and ethnic instrumentation.
Volume 2 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" series of Charlemagne recordings from the late '60s to mid '70s. The self-explanatory "Continuous Sound Forms" features two works from Palestine's archives. "Duo Strumming for Two Harpsichords" (1978) is broken into three excerpted duets between Palestine and Elisabeth Freeman who hammer out a continuous tight arpeggiation on two harpsichords. At predetermined times, the duo altered their tight rhythmic patterns to play indeterminant notes, giving a very playful feel to the piece. The title of "Piano Drone" (1972) is a little misleading as the entire piece doesn't exactly coalesce into an extended drone, rather this is a painterly composition of whimsical piano patterns that are washed out with acoustic effects using the piano's sustain pedal.
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"The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults so far comprises two cd volumes and this expensive vinyl item, which features an expanded version of what you get on half of the first cd volume (reviewed elsewhere). The 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" are here presented in four subtle variations (instead of the two found on the cd version, where the piece is pared with "Alloy"). This piece was based upon creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." Palestine presents two version of "Holy 1," one version of "Holy 2," and a sound-collage between was commissioned by Gus Solomons for a dance piece at New York University.
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"The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults begins with this volume that documents two distinct bodies of Palestine's work. The first being the 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" which are presented in two subtle variations. This piece was based upon the creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." The second half of the cd features "Alloy", which is one of those pieces that qualified Palestine as one of great minimalists from the 1960s. Working with Tony Conrad, Bob Feldman, and Deborah Glaser, Palestine accompanies the electric drones from "Holy" with extended glossalalic vocals, the clatter of various chimes, and Conrad bowing one very long amplified string. An excellent historical document.
This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen.
The disc of early Charlemagne Palestine electronic works ("late night recordings" at the NYU Intermedia center on the Buchla 100 and 200 analog synths, done between 1965 and 1970) is probably the most "listenable" of these three reissues. It's also volume 3 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" Palestine archive series. Listenable, yet certainly scarily dark and droney and hissy, conjuring fear and sudden violence, far from the pretty, hypnotic bliss of some of the man's later work. Inspired by everyday refrigerator hum and race car motors, but way more "late night", this material must predate his obsession with cute stuffed animals!
MPEG Download: "Tymbral For Pran Nath" [/audio/palestinetymbral.mp3]
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NYC drone-pioneer Palestine takes us on a 71-minute trip of shimmering bliss, utilizing not his usual Bosendorfer piano but rather a baroque organ. First realized in 1979, recorded in 1988, and finally now released. "Schlingen-Blangen" is a sustained organ drone in which Palestine manipulates the timbre subtly throughout the piece. Very reminscent of the works of Palestine's contemporary La Monte Young. To be filed under "disembodied organ sonority"!
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"Schlongo!daLUVdrone" was a Valentine's Day performance that Palestine gave as a part of the Beyond The Pink performance festival held in LA in 1998. His contribution was a pipe organ solo concert at the Hollywood Methodist Church. While Palestine's liner notes do well to explain the process, his grammar sucks: "I began my investigation pipe by pipe creating sonorities putting small folded paper nuggets between the keys a continuous sound object starting with a fundamental then a perfect fifth then the octave above and gradually building enormous sonorities over several hours with tens then hundreds then thousands of overtones interacting with the beats creating a rhythmic fabric of overwhelming complexity." Of course our grammar often leaves something to be desired too... but what are you gonna do?
We think the mystery suggested in the title is why this is the first ever recorded collaboration between these two giants of improvised left-field minimalist drone. Both Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, key figures in early American minimalism and the New York avant-garde of the early seventies had only performed three times together previously and since reuniting in Belgium in 2001, hadn't even seen each other in three decades. What's equally amazing is that neither one fully dominates this extended performance. Palestine's multiple crystalline organ drones graft neatly with Conrad's bowed pulsations from his modified 5 string violin, eventually intensifying with blistering shimmers and burning organic keyboard crescendos before falling into subdued space and void. There the two sweep the dust off and begin to spar with each other all over again, getting into some heated free-music territory culminating in Palestine's delayed vocal drones and Conrad's blissful undulating vibrations. Gorgeous!
First things first. SKATERS. 100 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. You know the drill. Anyway, James from the Skaters steps out on his own for this brief blast of free drone loveliness. Under the name Pan Dolphinic Dawn (thus the Dolphin on the cover, although not sure how the swastika on the other side figures into things), James wanders through murky tunnels of muted noise, thick, and dense, with mumbled rumbles and whirs piled up into near melodic waves of sound. Lots of reverb makes the whole thing sound pliable and soft like a pillow dipped in tar, like you could just dunk your head right into the middle of this 7", but the murk is thick and viscous enough that you would most likely be unable to pull yourself free and would end up suffocating, ears full of molten goo. But what a way to go.
Vinyl-only (with download), limited to 300 copies, on Utech, beautifully packaged, complete with obi, with a gorgeous cover painting depicting a scene from ancient Chinese mythology that's referenced by the band name. Oh, and the music? It's pretty fantastic too, if hard to describe, being an improv session featuring Leslie Low (The Observatory, Arcn Tmpl) and Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer) doing a chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter routine, Leslie working with loops of acoustic guitar and voice, gauzey and droney and soft, that meld with the extreme washes of crackling distortion and electronic glitch dished out by Lasse. And it works, the harsh high end insectoid skree sounds and the lovely mesmeric moody looping ones achieving an intriguing harsh/moody synthesis, separately and together quite satisfying to adventurous ears. Imagine, say, something gorgeously drifting and droney on Time Released Sound, remixed by Merzbow. Very nice indeed!!
Here stands the final report from Finnish electronic music masters Pan Sonic, a heavy, super distorted, seriously aggressive swansong, as Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen have decided to call it quits, years after releasing their first ep on the now seminal Sakho label. Moire patterns of phase-shifting bleeps and spiralling waves held their Sputnik orbits around punishingly simple techno drum programming in their earliest incarnation, with much of their gear being hand-built or repurposed from Russian technology that occasionally crossed the border into Finland. Hence, the Pan Sonic take on techno has always been unique compared to even the most innovative of techno producers, with their typical arsenal of Roland gear. Throughout those 16 years, the rhythms of Pan Sonic have shifted away from the techno monophunk and towards a mechano-electro swagger. Ghosts of Suicide's rockabilly influence, the industrial foundations laid by Throbbing Gristle, and the psychoacoustics transmitted from Xenakis' electronic scores all manifest within Pan Sonic. Much of the poetics of the group's sound are based on the tiniest of objects, amplified through extraordinary means as to express the sublime power of X-rays, radio waves, and the energy housed within the atom itself. The title Gravitoni refers to a hypothetical particle that has been predicted within quantum physics to be related to gravitational force and its correlative relationship to spacetime.
The album begins with the Pan Sonic duo revving their electrical engines and expelling visceral riffs of cathode-ray noise grafted upon urgent breakbeat rhythms whose pace hurtles down the path of linear particle accelerators, smashing into anything that gets in their way. But gradually, the album sublimates the rhythm amidst arctic reverberations of electrical pings cast against the walls of a huge metallic chamber. This progression from the claustrophobic to the expansive harkens to Pan Sonic's masterful 4cd boxset Kesto which took a similar sonic route and which positions Gravitoni as a fantastic finale to an incredible career. So recommended!
In 2004, the Finnish tech-minimalist duo Pan Sonic unleashed Kesto, a massive 4cd boxset that encapsulated all of their ideas, one half focused on their style of augmenting minimalist techno with engine propelled noise, while the other half concerned itself more with stripping everything away resulting in sublimely still abstractions of electron orbits and cathode ray hum. Three years later, Pan Sonic have yet to match that body of work, even after they applied plenty of those strategies to their acclaimed collaboration with John Duncan; and in many ways, Katodivaiche is an impressive recapitulation of Kesto with the necessary fine-tunings and adjustments that continue to keep Pan Sonic at the forefront of contemporary electronica. The first track enjoys the company of Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, whose languid notes counterpoint the clinical breakbeats shifting Pan Sonic's homage to Throbbing Gristle closer to contemporaries like Murcof or Polmo Polpo. While the next couple of tracks are Pan Sonic's trademarked blasts of concussive bomb noise exploding over low slung technotic grooves, Pan Sonic drops a dubstep number next, which should be the template for where South London should go next with that sound. Like the best tracks from Kode 9 and Burial, Pan Sonic focus on the physicality of stalking basslines while shifting layers of rhythm glide above effortlessly. Elsewhere, the phase shifting bleep and bloop which dominated the early Pan Sonic recordings return, perhaps in response to a series of minimalist techno singles released by Berlin's Sleeparchive who shamelessly / brilliantly appropriated the Pan Sonic / Plastikman sound. Altogether, it's a brilliant, if somewhat familiar sounding album from the masters of Finnish electronica.
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Sure there's a novelty to a collaborative album recorded by the figureheads from two generations of uncompromising (and at times brutal) minimalism, but this is not your garden variety resuscitation of crotchety '60s minimalism by Jim O'Rourke. When Charlemagne Palestine and Pan Sonic set organs, oscillators, and random noise generators to constantly warble for over an hour, their intentions are far from benevolent. This album of uneasy listening was commissioned by the VRPO Radio in the Netherlands and is limited to 1000 copies. If you blink, you'll probably miss it.
Woah! Talk about an unexpected, yet killer collaboration. In this corner, arctic electronic experimentalists Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen (aka Pan Sonic), from Finland. In the other corner, blackclad Emily The Strange lookalike and psych guitar shaman Keiji Haino, from Tokyo, Japan. Both parties know a thing or two about manipulating electricity, noise, and drone. You'll hear plenty of that here, the Vainio/Vaisanen/Haino trio recorded live in Berlin, November 2007.
Heck, we're always happy hearing Haino in any setting, but it turns out that Pan Sonic are particularly perfect to accompany him, they bring the darkness too... note that it's usually Haino's unique presence that makes itself felt most prominently in any collaboration with which he's been involved (Boris, Merzbow, Sitaar Tah, Zeitkratzer, etc.), and such is the case here, even the title is obviously Haino-esque. And nothing else sounds like his occasional, anguished vocals, which when they appear here, are in stark organic contrast to the digital, mechanical machinations of his co-conspirators Pan Sonic.
Guttural throat-torn outbursts from Haino screech forth over palpitating drum machine clicks and throbbing low-end pulses. Sizzling buzz and whirr wreathe the proceedings. Haino's whale call guitar feedback breaches the dark void, Tibetan monks are channelled. The dynamics shift from mysterious quiet groans and beautiful keening drones to loud, out and out distorted glitch/guitar warfare... It's been a loooong time since there's been an album from Haino's band Fushitsusha, but this is the next best thing!
Well, we dunno if you can download a blackhole but basically there's equivalent blackness and gravity on this compact disc, that we'd be happy to sell to you. And unlike any download, it's housed in nice Stephen O'Malley designed digipack packaging with the artists' names in spot varnish on the cover.
Recent AQ Record Of The Week honorees Pan Sonic team up again with surprise partner Keiji Haino, the Tokyo psych shaman himself. More proof of the mysterious Finland-Japan connection. Previously the extreme electronic duo and the guttural guitar guru had collaborated on a live-in-concert cd for Blast First Petite, Shall I Download A Black Hole And Offer It To You, which we heralded as the next best thing to a Fushitsusha recording. Apparently only days after that show in Berlin, Pan Sonic and Haino went into the studio for another go-round. Again, drone and darkness are manipulated here by the masters.
As bombastic as Pan Sonic has been throughout their career, it shouldn't be a surprise that Keiji Haino is the dominant force on this record (he was on the live one too) with Pan Sonic sublimating their Tesla coil bursts of electricity into a reverberant tapestry of rumbling basstones and undulating frequencies. On only a few occasions will you find the Vainio / Vaisanen duo sequencing anything rhythmic, with Haino taking that opportunity for a rather clean-sounding guitar solo on the quintessentially Haino title "Without Doubt, An Attestation Written From That Time, Will No Longer Have Effect, Because The Wound Has Widened So Much." The pairing works much better when Haino channels voice, guitar, electronics, and drums through an abstracted slant on his existentialist poetics such as manifesting his lung-torn shrieks and obliterated guitar distortion in parallel to the dive-bomb electrical storms from Pan Sonic on "I Have Embedded It Approximately 2 Minutes And 7 Seconds Into The 4th Song, In Order To Return Here Whenever I Wish." Perhaps, this was originally conceived as an electronic recapitulation of Fushitsusha, but Synergy works best when evoking the shadowy ritualism of Haino's more ambient act Nijiumu to manifest this expressively infernal recording.
So, while Keiji Haino and Pan Sonic only managed a couple of days working together back in 2007, it seems that not a minute was wasted during that time, as they managed to make two great recordings together. We don't know why the live one was cd-only, and this studio album released as lp-only, but that's the way it is. Again, art/design by Stephen O'Malley, a deluxe package indeed, and quite LIMITED.
Oh panda bears, they're so peculiarly roly-poly, black and white. Wait a sec, one of these things is not like the others! This entity calls himself Panda Bear, but there is little if anything in common with those creatures. Well, they do have opposable thumbs. Perhaps he survives on a strict diet of bamboo shoots? Seems unlikely. Anyways, this music maker, also known as Noah Lennox, also known as one of the founders of Animal Collective, has followed up his fine solo album Young Prayer which came out last year with this two-song 7" record. Oh and we should add that he somehow also finds time to record under the moniker Jane (whose recent Coconuts cd we've been throughly enjoying) to boot. "I'm Not" and "Comfy In Nautica" are both definitely in a similar hazy vein as his Jane material -- psych, avant-folk, drones among other things are once again drawn together into his whirlpool of sound -- but perhaps there's a bit more of a pop influence that makes its way into the mix to very good effect. Fits nicely right between Jane and the most recent Animal Collective album Feels. This is also apparently on the cdep format but we haven't gotten those yet...
Not sure what we were expecting... With a name like Panda Porn, and the fact that we got these from Heart & Crossbone, who usually supply us with super intense heavy noisy Israeli weirdness... But whatever we were expecting it sure wasn't this.
Five tracks, all very minimal and abstract, mostly glitch and buzz, and hiss and crackle. Much of it sounding like a needle in the run out groove of an lp, and you know how much we love that sound. A fuzzy chunk of muted glitchy static, beneath which strange streaks of low end throb and pulse, barely audible, deep resonant rumbles hum and whir peppered with rhythms crafted from cracks and pops, distant bell-like chimes, glistening high end tones and what sounds like strings glitched and chopped and skipping into stuttery rhythms, a collage of super damaged outsider turntablism. Lots of this sounds like a lo-fi Ryoji Ikeda, while the prettier bits remind us of Phillip Jeck. Really cool, but be warned, it's quite brief, less than 14 minutes, but we do find ourselves listening to it over and over, especially the last track, a jumbled stuttery minor key soundscape made from chopped up voices and hiccuping smears of strings.
The Rarities referred to in the title number 1 to 30. Rarities 1-5 are the five tracks of minimal glitch and buzz, while Rarities 6-30 are images, housed in a gorgeous, mini perfect-bound book. Stark textures, grayscale images, high contrast, simple yet super striking.
The cd is housed in a heavy book-sized cardstock sleeve, also included is a thick card with liner notes and images, the cd sleeve, the book and the card all housed in a printed slip cover, hand numbered on the back.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
Paul Panhuysen is the Belgian sound-sculptor who has worked extensively with the Fluxus inspired Maciunas Ensemble. In his previous works, he has transformed everyday sounds (notably clocks, birds, and here dot matrix printers) through 'rock' effects and results in nearing the drone supreme alongside Andrew Chalk and Jonathan Coleclough. In spite of the snobbish attitude that Panhuysen gives to 'rock' and 'heavy metal' pedals, Panhuysen has masterfully crafted dreamy repetitions of dot matrix printer clatter. If you loved [The User]'s "Symphony For Dot Matrix Printers #1," this is certainly one to check out!
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Rhodium 45 from the Table of the Elements. Paul Panhuysen is a sound-sculptor who has worked in the Fluxus / concept group The Maciunas Ensemble in producing some rather aesthetically stunning hybrids of trance-rock drones from conceptual frameworks that could easily give sterile results. His solo installations ('with' the Galvanos - semi-automated devices which have been programmed to subtly alter the elements of the installation) have generated dreamy golden colored drones from effects laden dot-matrix printers, Lucier-esque long stringed instruments, birds, and clocks. While this work could clearly fit along side the dronological investigations of Andrew Chalk or Arcane Device, Panhuysen maintains a decidedly academic view of these sounds with an underlying guilt over the 'rock' aspect to these sounds (mostly due to his use of electric guitars and 'rock' effects pedals). Hey, dude... rock is good. Your sound is good. What's the fucking problem? And better yet, what really is the fucking difference?
We're really so excited to finally welcome local label Time Released Sound to the aQuarius family. We've yet to list anything, in part because their releases are so limited, but also, because they sell out so quickly. Every single release, every single copy is an incredible work of art. Each one hand crafted, individually assembled, numbered and hand stamped, letter pressed and printed, the packaging thematically linked to the sound within, with photographs, or old records, strange little knick knacks, clock hands, piano keys, they're really incredible, an absolute labor of love, with most of the limited versions taking hours to assemble, and the fact that Time Released Sound is just one man, makes it all the more impressive. So from here on out, we'll get a limited number of each release, they're quite limited already usually around 70-100 copies. And odds are we won't be able to get more than 10-15, but trust us, they're worth it, sonically beautifully, and visually stunning. There will be regular non-art editions of some of the releases, much less limited, and thus less expensive, but if you're after one of the limited editions, you'll want to act fast.
The super limited art edition of this release sold out before we could manage to get any copies at all, but we did manage to get a handful of the slightly less limited (100 copies) digipak cd-r version, which is much cheaper, and still worth grabbing for the music inside, a gorgeous collection of field recording flecked folk, hazy and pastoral, spidery steel string guitars unfurl a dreamlike Appalachia over a bed of chirping birds, and mysterious bits of random percussion, a lovely bit of back porch dreaminess, which is how most of the record plays out, slippery slide guitar hovers over woozy bass and the sound of a gently burbling brook, long stretches of steel string buzz underpin simple, sweetly melancholic acoustic guitar, a crackling fire in the background, much of the music here is moody and muted, the guitar occasionally bursting into a fiery bit of psychedelia, but more often than not, darkly strummed, intertwining melodies creating lush landscapes of twang flecked drift.
Fans of Scott Tuma, Ilyas Ahmed, Chris Smith, James Blackshaw and other Appalachian soundscapers would do well to check this out.
After two cd-r's and a proper cd of completely gorgeous improvised Sitar music from Erik Amlee, we pretty much got to the point where we'd buy anything he put out. But we definitely weren't prepared for this Paradise Camp 23 disc. Sitar is still his instrument of choice, that and electric guitar. But PC23 is not another Amlee solo venture, PC23 is a 4 piece. A real band. Sort of.
All improvised, these tracks sound a bit like Amlee's solo material but WAY heavier, WAY darker, WAY more dense, and a lot thicker, and more slithery and almost metal at times. You can definitely hear lots of Bardo Pond, and SUNNO)), and Sunroof! and even some NNCK or Sunburned Hand. But with a haunting Eastern buzz, and way more of a blissed out psychedelic sprawl. Some tracks are monsters, huge churning walls of downtuned guitars, others are dreamy and shimmery, with the buzz of the sitar spreading out like a late morning fog, while guitars and electronics just drift lazily by, others are weird primal tribal jams, rife with deconstructed riffs, bits of random percussion, lots of buzz and clang and clatter, and still others are straight up sun dappled, strummy dream folk. So great. A definite contender for psych-dirge-dream-buzz-drone record of the year!
White Fur /// Black Cathedral from Canadian psychedelic spacerockers Parallel Lines /// (pretty sure the actual parallel lines are part of the band name, if they're not, they should be!), is the very first release from a very cool new UK label called Oaken Palace (whose other two releases are also reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, records by Nadja and Caudal). Oaken Palace are in fact, as far as we know, the first totally non-profit label (at least intentionally!), the label a purely charitable endeavor, that takes all the profits from record sales, and donates them to various environmental organizations around the world. The label focuses on dronemusic and psychedelia, which is obviously right up our alley, and besides the amazing music, we can definitely get behind the label's mission as well, which is to strengthen the connection between music and nature, in a much more tangible way than most groups, who just take promo shots in the woods, and adorn their record covers with all sorts of mysterious nature imagery.
The label takes this mission/concept a step further, having each group on the label pick a specific endangered species or habitat, their record is then dedicated to said animal/habitat, the record is then produced in an environmentally sustainable manner, with 100 percent recycled sleeves, zero carbon vinyl pressing, etc., and then each artist picks a charity related to the species or habitat the record is dedicated to, and that's where all the money goes. So cool!
Parallel Lines /// have chosen Polar Bears, and thus all the proceeds from White Fur /// Black Cathedral will in fact go directly to Polar Bears International, the world's leading polar bear conservation group.
Parallel Lines /// might be a new name to most folks, but at least one of the 'Lines will be familiar to longtime readers of the aQ list, Eric Quach, whose one man drone outfit Thisquietarmy is a huge favorite around here, and that sort of swirling blackened drift is definitely all over PL's sound but this is no ambient record, these guys belong more alongside outfits like Carlton Melton, crafting slow building, brooding psychedelic epics that transform from abstract cosmic drift, to dense swirling heaviness, two epic sidelong tracks, the first begins as some total interplanetary bliss out, swirling cymbal shimmers, cascades of sci-fi synths, prismatic and celestial, the drums gradually surfacing, before becoming a wild free form chaos, the surrounding instruments following suit, a thick billowy cloud of FX heavy soft noise trippiness, the drums soon settling into a simple motorik groove, suddenly anchoring the whole sound, and transforming it into something much more propulsive and psychedelic, the guitars growing more distorted, the sound getting heavier and heavier, before it all splinters into a dense, roiling swirl, which in turn soon fades out, and expands into a glimmering star field of sound, drifting spectrally, until the drums once again take charge, and harness the clouds of thrum and whir into some serious mesmerizing hypno-rock minimalism, a minimalism that quickly becomes maximal, blossoming into a gorgeous heavy psych crescendo, and then immediately slipping into some slow decay fade. Awesome. Fans of White Hills, The Heads, Carlton Melton, Hawkwind, all the purveyors past and present of total transcendent space psych, this will definitely push all your buttons.
And hell, there's a whole 'nother side to go, and it's another doozy, the opening a hazy stretch of washed out thrum, like the Caretaker or Tim Hecker, all gristly and grainy, the drums slowly surfacing through the murk, a little bit of twang, some lush chordal guitar swells, the rhythm an understated shuffle, the guitars thick and softly roiling, meditative and trancey, the vibe is slow build psych, but instead of exploding into another stretch of heavy jamming, the sounds seem to melt and ooze into a dreamlike glimmerscape, all softly pulsing synths and soft focus melodic glistening, a sort of kraut-age ambience, weightless and ethereal, but these guys aren't done yet, the sound morphing into some almost Necks like skittery jazziness, before quickly becoming yet another stretch of hypno-rock mesmer, all hazy and dreamily druggy, before one last blow out, heavy psych swirl giving way to a final field of crystalline shimmer.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, 180 gram white vinyl, 100 percent recycled packaging, and includes a download code too!
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Working with Lawrence Casserly (who collaborated with Parker for the amazing Solar Winds album for Touch), Noel Akchote, and Joel Ryan, Parker has managed to construct live soundscapes resembling musique concrete's erratic starts and stops in and out of silence. Lots of discordant blips make for an another great album...
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Evan Parker - the venerable saxophonist and avant-jazz icon of the UK, known for his mastery of circular breathing - and John Wiese - the Californian noisenik with a vast array of lo-fi meets hi-tech strategies in gnarled sound - set forth on a series of collaborative concerts in 2008 throughout the UK. On an off day from performing, the two found themselves in the studio where they recorded these real-time improvisations. Parker's looping glissandos and continuous streamed notes result from his circular breathing techniques; and Weise musters a static-laced cacophony, cable buzz splutter, and start-stop tape mechanications given over to MSP control systems. Wiese doesn't succumb to any ill-informed desire to dress-up his noise constructs, if anything his abrasions with all of their soft and loud dynamics are as guttural and gurgling as ever. Well, they never hit the full-on sustained explosion of some of Weise's Sissy Spacek recordings; but what good would that do for Parker? If anything, this is a solid redux of the British improv ethos that Parker helped pioneer in the '70s.
So how many electric harp / electric guitar / electric guitar trio albums do you own? None? Well you should pick this one up then, 'cause it's good, and also sales of this cd benefit the Flywheel Community Arts Space in Easthampton, Mass., which seems like a
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Still another in the Table Of The Elements' series of super limited, silkscreened one sided 12"s. This latest 12" features harpist and NY downtown mainstay Zeena Parkins along with Raz Mesinai and Jim Pugilese. While the instrumentaion is listed as electric harp, wasp (!), percussion, mallet instruments and bells, the sound is a lot less rhythmic and percussive than that list would lead you to believe. Instead, it's a deep, rich, swirling wash of gentle melodies, droning chords, and shimmering tones with subtle low-in-the-mix rhythms that occasionally sound a bit like a more ambient Muslimgauze. The final piece on the record is a beautiful hypnotic melodic drone constructed out of Pugilese's rapid mallet strikes, Steve Reich-like, slowly-shifting rhythm stretched into a sweet undulating melody.
A flowery trellis is silkscreened in white ink on the non-playing side of this record. And in response to the complaints of folks who bought any of the first eight 12"s in this series and experienced the brittle / easy-cracking plastic sleeves, these new 12"s come in an improved sleeve, much softer, and way less fragile.
Recent Wire cover stars Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori team up, not for the first time, for this new disc for Austrian experimental electronics label Mego. Both fixtures of the downtown NYC scene, Parkins is the fashionably dressed avant-harpist best known lately for playing with Bjork (alongside Matmos), and Mori is the former drummer for no wave legends DNA who has made a career since then doing really interesting things with drum machines, though now she's using laptop computers. Together, Parkins and Mori create an enjoyable example of electro-acoustic improv, the abstract soundworld of their Phantom Orchard mixing harp, piano, and synth with squiggly electronics and samples, some tracks mesmerizingly mild and pretty, others on the somewhat skronkier side...
"Getxo" is the second full album from New Zealand transplant Rosy Parlane, who had previously worked in the avant-noise-rock ensemble Thela with Dean Roberts and Dion Workman. Like the solo work of Roberts and Workman, Parlane has been exploring the
While perhaps not as prolific as his former partner Dean Roberts (they played together in the Sonic Youth inspired avant-rock trio Thela), Rosy Parlane has quietly constructed a quite impressive career himself. Iris is Parlane's third solo album, after a couple of releases on his own Sigma Editions imprint and a collaboration with Christian Fennesz. In many ways, Iris echoes the recent Fennesz masterpiece Venice, as DSP filters perpetually spiral samples into immersive drone constructions. Parlane's Iris is less focused on the suggestions of melody and more concerned with textural abstractions which softly shower upon the composition's minimal foundation. Spread across three extended pieces, Iris is a bleary low key album, supposedly crafted from organ, piano, and guitar, but you might not necessarily guess so. Parlane's digital treatment of those source materials renders almost all of the references to the original instruments unrecognizable: a series of monochromatic blurs of ambient sound quietly activated by distant mechanical whirrings and icy fragments that are just as fragile as they are cold. Certainly on par with the laptop intellect of Stephan Mathieu and Akira Rabelais.
New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark should really have a word with one of her country's citizens about the paucity of material he's been producing over the years. When so many other New Zealand sound artists release dozens of albums every year (you know, Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, Anthony Milton, etc.), how can almost three years go by between albums for Rosy Parlane? Fortunately, Parlane's delinquency in keeping up with his fellow New Zealanders is made up by the quality of Jessamine. While Parlane's work harbors a glassine drone sensibility found in the similarly minded aforementioned NZ artists, his work has a considerable density and an appreciation for digital processing rarely heard in the feral drone underground. Parlane's ephemeral atmospheres strive for an activated minimalism, occasionally harboring similarities to the sparkling electronica of the Kompakt Pop Ambient sensibility; but he often pushes the work into teethgrinding electro-acoustic studies paralleling the Hafler Trio and even Hitoshi Kojo's vastly under appreciated collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi. The closest thing that Parlane gets to the tempestuousness of a Campbell Kneale outing is on Jessamine's finale which culminates in a steadily building track of monochromatic psychedelic distortion.
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This is another in the Tonschacht series of 7"s that has previously featured Gate, Ashtray Navigations, Hrvatski, and Vote Robot. Rosy Parlane is a New Zealand transplant now living in London, having spent a good portion of the last decade in such NZ guitar noise projects as Thela (with Dean Roberts and Dion Workman), Emperical, and Pit Viper. As can be heard on his recent solo disc, Parlane's recent work is much less Sonic Youth and much more Fennesz in taking the powerbook approach to sound manipulation. These two short tracks are warm constructions of digitized surges and morse code bleeps. Nicely done.
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Shimmering gossamer drones that are constructed with appears to be looping hypnotic layers of violin. Quite similar to what Robin Storey did for Zoviet France and Rapoon. A very nice debut from this New Zealander.
We've long been fans of this Louisville post rock supergroup, featuring members of Crain, Ariel M, The For Carnation, and Rodan. Simulacrenfield might just be their best yet. Mesmerizing and hypnotic, equal parts melodic meander and rhythmic churn, they often sound like a heavier Tortoise, locking into hypnotic, almost jazzy grooves, but without being afraid to infuse those jams with thick distorted guitar crunch, tangled complex woodwind interplay or buzzing sci-fi synth shimmer. With an arsenal that includes clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and synthesizer, augmenting the classic rock guitar / bass / drums (not to mention some banjo here and there), these guys craft gorgeous, timeless instrumental post rock, the sort few bands play anymore, and even fewer can pull off.
The opener, "Destruction Paper" perfectly displays everything that's so good about these guys, a dizzying blend of post/math/kraut rock, the horns and synths adding so much breadth to the group's sound, standing in for vocals in a way that keeps the sound from getting boring, while simultaneously elevating the sound, adding a sort of prog/art rock element. "Camus" is more of the same, the band locked tight, the core instruments laying out an irresistible groove, while the horns wind and whirl and intertwine. The banjo on "Jalepenooptics" totally transforms the song into some sort of strange twang flecked post/kraut workout, the horns giving it a sort of chamber ensemble vibe, and definitely reminding us of Tortoise again.
Over the next few songs, the sound swings from dark Slinty brood, to almost Decemberists sounding Victorian jangle, to Godspeed like slow build and finally to the nearly 11 minute closer "Sea Of Bubbly Goo", which also has some serious Slint going on, the guitar parts creepy and skeletal, drifting amongst clouds of cymbal shimmer, gradually growing more and more propulsive, the sound fantastically tense and hypnotic, the tempo building, effects whirling, the horns adding plenty of melody, finally exploding in a skronky, crunchy, epic denouement, before fading out into a cloud of rumbling slow fading distorted low end. AWESOME. Definitely for fans of Tortoise, Chevreuil, Trans Am, Circle, Fridge, Maserati, Explosions In The Sky, Resonator, Salvatore, Woodsman and various other practitioners of the lost art of post/math rock...
We've been a fan of French musique concrete composer, Bernard Parmegiani for awhile now. His sound engineer's background brings forth a stunningly unique view of music-making through which he combines improvisational intuition with an excellent sense of compositional form. JazzEx is a collection of four of his earliest works: "JazzEx" (1966), a composition for electronic tape and Jazz Quartet from the 1966 Festival de Royan; "Pop Eclectic" (1969), an electro-acoustique divertimento that mixes natural and synthetic sounds and was composed for the Peter Foldes movie; "Du Pop a l'Ane" (1969), a plunderphonics sound collage using pop and symphonic sounds; "Et Apres" (1973), an amazing electronic tango composition featuring Michel Portal on bandoneon. This is an important period of Parmegiani's work, noting his first major steps in this eclectic sound language. Highly recommended!
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Parmentier is a collaboration between New Zealand's Rosy Parlene and Dion Workman (ex-Thela) who combine to create scratchy drawn out soundscapes with bleak, claustrophobic drones and rhythms approximating at time the Chain Reaction pulse, by building loops out of skipping records. The end result is similar to Boyd Rice's infamous Black Album, but far more beautiful.
We've long been huge champions of the highly unpronounceable UK outfit Hwyl Nofio, aka Steve Parry. Every record some new world of sound, haunting and mysterious, delicate and lovely, creepy and dreamy. Judging by how quickly we sell through most of the Hwyl records, you all feel very much the same way.�
Off The Map is the long in the works collaboration between Hwyl's Steve Parry, and fellow guitarist Fredrik Soegaard, who had been a contributor on previous Hwyl recordings. Thus it's not really a huge stretch to imagine that some of Off The Map might sound a bit like Hywl Nofio, and it does, while at the same time taking off in its own distinct directions.�
Two guitar players, each with their own approach to the instrument, both seeming to fit together perfectly. Much more active than the often subdued Hwyl records, these two guitars tangle and wrangle and the results are quite lovely, from buzzing metallic drones, and complex webs of melody and overtones, to burbling cauldrons of electronic sputter and squiggle, to gorgeously melodic soundscapes of sparkle and glimmer, to chest rattling steel stringed lowbuzz, to damaged atonal acoustic folk, peppered with squeaky balloon streaks of high end guitar, to blissed out washes of soft shimmer and muted melody, to grinding Wolf Eyesian industrial scrapescapes, complete with haunting pterodactyl skree and throbbing metallic crunch, to dizzying arrays of all-over-the-place screech and splatter and flurries of upper register trills, to soft billowing waves of warm sun drenched sonic buzzstorms...
Every track is dramatically different, but they all seem to fit together, like chapters in a book, each track a tiny piece of the story, every one hinting at what is to come, each retaining ghostly memories of what came before, part of the joy is figuring out the story, following the record from end to end, it's a journey through sound, letting your ears lead the way, but the great thing about Off The Map, and music in general, if you don't care about the 'story' or the 'journey', the sounds offer just as much on their own, sans emotional and intellectual intent, just sweet simple sonics to set your ear drums abuzz.�
David Parsons is not as well known outside of New Age circles as say Deuter or Kitaro, but in the case of this New Zealand artist who's been releasing music since the early eighties, obscurity in that particular genre is an asset rather than a liability. Parsons makes the kind of New Age music we really dig a lot around here, the kind that exceeds the boundaries of the genre into areas of experimental drone, pastoral Kosmiche music and 20th century composition. Like Eberhard Schoener (another krauty 'New Ager' we love), Parsons is known mostly for a cross-cultural fusion of Eastern and Western musical forms that feature lots of ethnic instruments and field recordings, on Earthlight, Parsons only uses synthesizers, where he programmed in his own sounds built completely from scratch. Deep bottom-heavy Ur-drones, and soft phased in high tones converge on fields of repetitive gamelan-ish arppegiations and filtered washes of bell tones. Really Nice!
Back in 2006, we reviewed a record by a mysterious band (or person) called Part Timer. Whose sound was a gorgeous lush dreamfolk, overlaid with bits of glitch and electronic skitter. At the time, that sort of thing was all the rage, for a band to take their pedestrian folk or indie pop, and then cover it with electronic bits, to make it edgy or hip or whatever. But Part Timer seemed to effortlessly transcend that. Their sound organic, but with the various electronic elements an integral part of not just the sound, but the composition as well.
On a trip to Japan about a year ago, we took a long train ride through the countryside, up a mountain, to a monastery tucked way on top of a forest covered mountain. That record was the soundtrack, and it was perfect, the sound of green trees rushing past, little villages tucked into the mountain side, the movement of the train, the blue skies, the world rushing by, clouds, birds, the sound is just s soft and lovely and tranquil and beautiful.
We were super excited to discover that there was in fact another Part Timer record, which we finally managed to get from a tiny Japanese label, and we're happy to report, it's just as gorgeous as the other one.
Acoustic guitars weave tranquil little melodies, super spare rhythms are constructed from bits of glitch and record crackle, the sound of birds and children playing constantly in the background, like this is the soundtrack to some warm afternoon stroll though a tiny village, cobblestone streets, the world lush and verdant, bits of vocals surface here and there, offering the tiniest hint of melody, muted chiming bells ring out, simple melodies plucked out on old pianos, the sound of creaking machinery, moaning violins, sweeping strings, it sounds like a lot of sound, but the sound is never dense or cluttered, instead it's spacious and airy, nearly weightless at times, the sound of floating on a puffy white cloud through a crystal clear summer sky.
At its heart Blau is a simple soft folk record, but the folk drifts through strange landscapes of subtle sonic variation, the electronic bits never intrusive, gently complimenting the lilting guitars, the voices and textures and field recordings wrapped around the melodies like some soft down comforter, everything about Blau is tranquil and dreamlike, warm and so utterly soothing. Some of the prettiest pop folk we've ever heard.
We really have to come up with a name for this stuff. You know, that sort of deconstructed fragmented pop, glitchy crumbling, fuzzed out ambient weirdness, everything blurry and buzzy and soft focus. Jeck, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and now Part Timer. It's another one of THOSE SOUNDS, the kind of sounds we can't ever get enough of, just like super hard ragga jungle or buzzy drone-y black metal, it's a sound that we are absolutely in love with. If we could figure out away to make these records go on forever and ever and ever we surely would (for now, the repeat button will have to suffice).
But as we've mentioned in the past, it's not enough just to assemble some lilting folk or some pretty ambience, and then haphazardly "fuck it up" with weird electronic bleeps and bloops or fuzzy drones. No, it takes someone special to allow organic prettiness and jagged digital disruptions to co-exist so perfectly. It's like some strange alchemical art, allowing two such disparate sounds to exist as one, as if we couldn't possibly imagine them separate.
And rarely has there been a more beautiful, and subtle example of this art than on this debut release from Part Timer.
First and foremost, this is simply a gorgeous dreamfolk record, glistening guitar melodies, languid and lazy, sweet and sundappled, with tinkling piano, fluttering flutes, ethereal angelic female vocals, drifting bits of abstract twang and distant reverbed horns, shuffling muted rhythms, a breathtaking collection of shimmery pop folk perfection. And that's before we even consider the fascinating and constantly fluctuating production, a series of bizarre treatments, rendering each little perfect pop nugget or drifting free folk flitter in a completely different light.
A little bit of soft folky twang, becomes a haunting stuttering soundscape of steel strings and weird tape recorder clicks, sweet pop vocals become totally obscured beneath filmy layers of fuzzy distortion and glitchy grit. Weird almost-IDM rhythms materialize from distinctly un-techno song parts, before coming apart into some murky ambient drift. The whole record is glazed with strange bits of sonic sorcery, a little sprinkling of dusty old looped record crackle, warm smears of fuzzy foggy melodic murmur, warped warbles and staticky grit, chopped and shuffled vocals, thick drifts of white noise tape hiss, all miraculously managing to act more as subtle accompaniment rather than overpowering noise.
The perfect blend. Catchy and simple, dreamy and lovely, but slightly off kilter and subtly damaged. Like discovering a tape of some lost folk pop classic, all degraded and decayed, and then trying to repair and reassemble it, but realizing that there is too much tape hiss and too many drop outs to fully restore the tape, only then realizing that somehow, the final product, this, is even more lovely than the original could have ever been.
We'd been hearing a lot about this percussion and flute duo for a while now, but this is the first recording we've managed to track down, and we're happy to report that it more than lives up to the hype. Much of the record is spare and sparse as you might imagine, based on the instrumentation, but there's plenty here that is surprisingly lush and full, expansive and psychedelic, the duo augmenting their percussion and flute with tapes and electronics, as well as an old military communication system (!). The result is a sound that drift and meanders, and spends much time hovering in expanses of abstract shimmer, but also often coalesces into something much more rhythmic and jazzy, psychedelic and almost poppy. If we had to come up with a comparison, we might do the addition like this: the freaky forest folk of Avarus + the abstract free rock of No Neck Blues Band + the dark psychedelia of Natural Snow Buildings = PWHMOBS! The record begins with some minimal percussion, fluttering flutes, all floating on a super spare droned out shimmer, super abstract and at times, barely there, but before long, the sounds coalesce into a gorgeously hypnotic sort of spaced out krautfolk, softly rhythmic, with an almost This Heat style mesmer, the sound shifting constantly from hazy psychedelic churn, to mechanical clockwork minimalism do delicate and hushed dronedrift whir to primitive tribal ritualism, rife with all manner of textures, processed vocals, field recordings, found sounds, processed loops, stumbling rhythms, backwards samples, the result subtly ominous and haunting, soundtracky and super mesmerizing.
LIMTED TO 530 COPIES. Housed in a super swank matte finish full color sleeves, and with a full color printed insert.
We've been wanting to list something from this flute and percussion duo for ages now, but we've been unable to get enough copies of any of their releases to list until now. From the same label that released the recent 2lp reissue of Gate's The Dew Line, which we made Record Of The Week, comes this, an older release from the oddly monikered Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, originally released on tape in a limited run of just 50 copies (on Rayon Recs), now available again as a limited lp (with a bonus track), and like the other recordings we've heard from these guys, it's amazing what they can whip up with just a flute and percussion. Somewhere between modern minimalism and free jazz and abstract ambience, these guys lay down a strange landscape of creaks and groans and rumbles, sounding a bit like an acoustic Wolf Eyes, with some moaning drones and abstract shakers and random bits of hand percussion, while the flute unfurls a fluttery bit of folkiness, that sounds like Spiritual Jazz via gypsy folk, the percussion becomes gradually more rhythmic, as the drones in the background seem to coalesce, and the flute becomes weirdly processed, as clouds of cymbal shimmer add some high end skree to the mix, the sound slipping into a weird avant No neck sort of territory. One minute it's hushed and contemplative, and sounds like it could be some lost recording on the ESP label, the next it's clattery and softly cacophonous and sounds like it could be some weird strain of Finnish Forest Folk, and the next it's some sort of cosmic free jazz psychedelia all long layered tones and sputtering percussion, and still the next it sounds like some weird hybrid of lo-fi electronica and the Dead C at their poppiest. So weird and wonderful. Start here, but then try to track down whatever you can from these two. Everything we've heard is great!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
This long out of print Partridge/Budd collaboration has been reissued with different cover art, more liner notes (offering an account of how these two unlikely musical bedfellows came to meet and how these recordings came to be) and a bonus track! For those unfamiliar with the album from its original release back in 1994 and those who might be expecting more of a pop presence considering the intelligent hook-writing talents of XTC's frontman Partridge, you'll soon discover that this album sounds nothing like XTC and everything like Harold Budd. The seventeen tracks are divided into seven sections -- Prelude, Geography, Interlude, Structures, Interlude, Artifacts and Postlude. Meditative soundscapes with occasional spoken word segments (actually Partridge's poetry as read aloud by Budd). Shimmery percussive washes weighted by solemn piano and guitar lines, analog synthesizer textures and cycles played out on Indian and African bells. Elegant and beautiful.
