For those familiar with the SF group Charming Hostess, this follow-up to 2001's Trilectic album is an eagerly anticipated, more than welcome sight (or should we say sound?). For those unfamiliar, this is a wonderful way to acquaint yourself with Charming Hostess' vibrant trio of fiery female vocalists Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes and Cynthia Taylor. Richly infused with Balkan, Jewish and Sufi elements, their music is at once captivatingly complex, electrifyingly bold and nothing short of acrobatic. You might also know these ladies for their membership in the equally avant SF bands Idiot Flesh and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum -- some of whose members also contributed to this album.
We've long been fans of this mysterious outfit from Indiana, whose witchy blackened atmospheric black doom doesn't sound so much Midwestern as it does like it was conjured up from some other realm, via some mysterious ritual that involves much bloodletting, torches, robes, goats, a full moon, and probably some virgins, but as we mentioned in our review of record number two, Charnel House's sound seems to gradually be growing more atmospheric and witchy, and less overtly metallic. The debut was a murky muddy sprawl of doomy riffage, noise drenched creep, and furious blasting blackness, but even back then the haunting ethereal vocals gave the music a seriously witchy, ritualistic vibe, and if anything, that sounds has moved completely to the fore on Black Blood, just check out the opening track, which pairs buzzing sinewy bass and loping minimal drumming, to very minimal guitars, no riffing or buzzing really, more sort of swirling and atmospheric, with everything dropping out occasionally, leaving just those hazy vocal incantations, and a skeletal rhythmic backdrop, and when the sound does shift into blasting blackness, the production is so strange, that it doesn't even really sound heavy, or necessarily black metal, instead, it's a strangely frenzied rapid fire skittery blast, none of the music changes, just the drums, blasting lo-fi beneath the wraithlike vocals, and gauzy atmospheric drifts, freaky and far out and super cool.
Here's where we might say, and so goes the rest of the record, and while much of the rest of the record does involve the same elements, the structures and arrangements are all over the place. "Atavism" launches immediately into a pounding, blasting, noise rock churn, but there seem to be no guitars, just buzzing bass, and those ever present witchy vocals, it's a super strange combo, and again, the production is bizarre, brittle, space-y, we're reminded at times of Aluk Todolo for sure, the same sort of occult rock vibe, but Charnel House are much more chaotic, a little ramshackle, lurching from chaotic noise rock crush ("Of The Sea") that minus those vocals, could be some weird band on Load, to wild chaotic drum heavy blowouts like "When You Become", that sound a bit like a dialed down Lightning Bolt performing some sort of arcane sonic ritual, to the almost post rock meander of "Sewn Shut", the haunting spectral vocals tying them all together into some sort of otherworldly blackened avant psychedelic occult rock ritual, that is deeply and darkly mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! Beautifully silkscreened fold over sleeves, the back half revealing the lp inside, each one hand numbered, includes a download code as well!
Record number two from this mysterious blackened witchy doomdirge combo, an offshoot of similarly droney and doomy aQ faves OS. But we're beginning to think we might dig Charnel House more than OS. And it has a lot to do with the vocals, which we described in another review as "demonic priestess vocals", which definitely sums it up pretty perfectly. If that whole new wave of female fronted heavy rock bands (Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth, Christian Mistress) is just to polished for you, then maybe Charnel House is what you're after, way more raw and lo-fi, bleak and blackened, primitive and noisy, the sound slipping easily from doomy abstract dirge, to churning blackened blast, the sound minimal, and cyclical, repetitive and trancelike, and then when the vocals come in, the sound is utterly transformed, into some sort of black forest ritual, some wild witchy incantation, hovering ethereal and angelic over the churn and chug and blast and buzz below. "Erosive" is the perfect example of CH's strange sound, the band locked into a tranced out repetitive blast, over which a second guitar chugs out a droney looped chord, lurching and lumbering, totally at odds with the manic blast below, the sound all on its own totally mesmerizing, but then every once in a while the vox drift in, and the sound becomes more blissed out, more abstract, the heaviness tempered by the spectral quality of the vocals. The music sounds like Ride For Revenge or some other strangely minimal black metal outfit, the vocals just take it somewhere else, this raw abstract black metal becomes some sort of otherworldly heaviness.
Elsewhere the record grows even more dramatic, with the band spitting out explosive gouts of wild chaotic heaviness, only to stop on a dime, leaving just the vocals and a simple rhythmic pulse (and a little hazy shimmer), to drift dreamily, before the band explodes back in. While elsewhere the band go slooooooow, transforming into a way more melodic Monarch, a dour slo-mo creep, again offset by those creepy, dreamy, haunting vocals. The production is a huge part of it too, sometimes murky and muddy, all the sounds muted and blurred into a near drone, while other times the sound is sharp and corrosive, changing the entire vibe of the song and the record. The more we listen to this, the more it reveals subtle details, headphones even more so, a dense, dark layered landscape of looped black buzz and haunted witchy mystery...
Housed in a cool, hand stamped, cardstock sleeve, with a huge printed full color poster / lyric sheet inside, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
Along with the insanely limited tape-and-bones-in-a-wooden-coffin from blackdoom horde OS (which is most likely already sold out), we also have this, the lp debut from Charnel House, a similarly blackened and doomy offshoot of the OS mothership, but with an added witchy element in the form of some demonic priestess vocals...
The sound though is not hugely removed from that of OS, the riffs are murky and muddy and doomy, the tempo, at least at first is a slithery, lumbering creep, the percussion on the opening track doesn't even sound like drums, instead it sounds like a field recording of a passing freight train, which only makes it that much weirder and cooler, the result is some sort of abstract slowcore minimal doom, but those female vocals, definitely add another element, transforming it into something much more haunting and melodic instead of just sludgey and crusty.
But CH are much more likely to erupt into full on blasting black metal, albeit a BM filtered through their own particularly cracked and filthy take on the sound, which renders the blast and buzz more washed out and chaotic, blurred and smeared, the beats, when you can hear them, either sound NOT like beats at all, like the freight train rhythm of the first track, or they're mostly buried under the roiling blackness above.
And so it goes, the band shifting from that murky black crush, to more crusty minimal black doom plod, the drumming getting super strange and abstract when you can hear it, otherwise just adding to the general chaos, the slower bits are rife with soaring melodies and deep sonic swells, sometimes, leaving just ghostly ambience and those witchy vocals, just as often transforming into a murky cinematic warped and woozy drone-doom, or exploding back into another stretch of blasting chaotic blackness.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in cool folded textured paper silkscreened covers.
Richard Chartier's "Decisive Forms" would be a great record for cats, dogs, dolphins, baleen whales, bats, elephant seals, octopuses, grasshoppers, sea lions, harbor seals, moray eels, sharks, noctruid moths, hermit crabs, giraffes, american alligators, african crocodiles, hyaenas, elephants, black rhinos, common rats, grey pigeons, walruses, mice, drum fish, bauerbirds,
In many ways, the work of Richard Chartier is anathema to the aesthetic course embraced by Aquarius Records. It can't be tangentially connected to the expanding definitions of metal, and only liminally parallels the feral dronecore of Birchville Cat Motel and the Double Leopards. It doesn't lend itself to ridiculous ruminations on the artifice of memory and loss, or any hyperbolic rhetoric for that matter. It's hard even to call this type of work beautiful as the rigor embedded into the process is attuned to an cold sterility rather than an aspirations for aesthetic transcendence. Thus, Chartier's work simply is what it is: a pure manifestation of sound elegantly moving through time with a highly refined sensibility for the subtle transition. The simple perfection from the minimalist ethos is difficult to champion as the manifestations are hardly theatrical enough to warrant any of the marketing strategies listed above to make most people jump up and down; but here we are, announcing that Richard Chartier has crafted an exquisite album, one that may be his finest recordings to date.
Incidence is a vacuum of external references, beginning and ending with the same hissing static. Chartier plunges the album into a series of interlocking subsonic frequencies. While these frequencies were never intended to achieve the heaviosity of SUNNO))) or Earth, Chartier's understanding of psychoacoustic principles actualizes an impressively claustrophobic display of blackened tones. As Chartier introduces a simple half-step melody against these extended drone vibrations, his work opens a small referential window towards the grim isolationism of Thomas Koner or BJ Nilsen. Time manages to stand still on the best of Chartier's work, and at over an hour in length, Incidence is over before you know it. Very, very well done.
Ultra-minimalist composer Richard Chartier has claimed that this album "suggests an incremental process of reduction with the compositional focus placed in the space between sound and silence." It takes about 17 minutes of practical nothingness before the
Easily the best Richard Chartier album we've come across! The DC-based ultra-minimalist has been responsible for a number of albums so reductivist in their methodology and presentation that even with headphones, it can be a strain to discern what profundities Mr. Chartier may be offering to his audience. Yet in recent years, Chartier has been shedding the minimalist hyperbole for sterilized electronica and creating some truely evocative compositions for impressionist ambience. There was his Archival 1991 and his collaboration with William Basinski which caused us to really take notice to Chartier's work as something beyond an exercise in ultra-minimalism; and now there's Retrieval 1-5. Originally released on vinyl through ERS back in 2004, this album has now been revamped for cd where it really belongs. Basinski, Thomas Koner, Lustmord (e.g. Where The Black Stars Hang) and Keith Berry would all be reference points for the steady dronescaping that Chartier musters on these five tracks which were in fact retrieved from old analog material Chartier produced in the '90s. These beautifully rippled and hushed drones may not have the academic rigor that won Chartier the Honorable Mention for Ars Electronica, but they are far more evocative and emotionally connected than any of his earlier recordings. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Upon discovering this album on our new arrivals rack, Loren Chasse remarked "When hasn't a Bernhard Gunter album been a tribute to Morton Feldman?" It is true that over the past couple of years, the ultra-minimalist electronic composer Gunter has been paralleling Feldman's late period pieces, which centered around the slow evolution of slighly asymetrical tonal patterns for small wind-instrument ensembles. As Gunter has acquired the habit (perhaps from Feldman) of citing his influences as dedications and titles of his pieces, it was only a matter of time before "For Morton Feldman" came to fruition (after previous albums gave credit to Xenakis, Luigi Nono, Mark Rothko, etc.) Yet this album doesn't entirely speak with Gunter's voice as he has commissioned two of his closest associates, Richard Chartier and Steve Roden, to compose tributes to Feldman as well. Gunter begins the album with a processed field recording of rushing water, and adding wavering notes from a Sho - a Japanese flute which Gunter performs much like the dissonant notation that Feldman ascribed to pieces like "For Philip Guston." Richard Chartier's piece suffers from the same problem as the majority of his recordings... most of it simply can't be heard beyond muffled bass rumbles. Upon viewing the visual waveform of the material, it's clear that something is present, but operating at frequencies that our stereo can't generate / can't playback. The Steve Roden track, however, is the reason to get this tribute as his tidal fluctuation of metallic resonance with tiny, ghostly slivers of something sounding like a sitar struggling to be heard. It has to be said that none of these pieces are as challenging or as uncompromising as Morton Feldman's iconoclastic compositions; yet, strains of Feldman's austerity and muted colors run strong on this album.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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If only all dubstep sounded this mean and mysterious! A seriously dark, low slung slab of bass heavy skitter from some unknown electronic alchemist, a stripped down skeletal beat, some skull cavingly caustic electronic crunch, heavily panned, swinging from speaker to speaker, disembodied female vox, swirls of minor key synths, so tense and dense and claustrophobic, the beats wreathed in clouds of thick swirling bass buzz... Over the course of the track's 11 minutes, the mood and tension just get ratcheted further and further up, the sound more and more layered, like the soundtrack to some foreign thriller, maybe a chase scene through dark alleys, or a couple's decent into drug induced madness, the sound brooding and THICK, about as -heavy- as electronic music gets, easily our favorite dubstep/electronic jam of the year, it kills us it's only one song, but we've been playing this on repeat pretty much nonstop.
One sided, super limited, packaged in a super swank hand screened jacket.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Odd to think that this is only the second solo recording for San Francisco's exceptional sound artist Loren Chasse after his numerous outings with id battery, Thuja, and The Knit Separates. "Exfolia Motors" is a collection of four different works, whose sections are mixed up and interspersed along the continuum of the disc... as if each of these sections have been broken from their original narratives and been rearranged in a more poetic fashion. "Exfolia Motors" presents a beautiful crystallization of droning sound with origins in various bells and gongs, the dynamic pulsations of an amplified strobe light, field recordings from rural Pennsylvania, and the crackling details of paper, rocks, and cloth. Chasse accentuates his source materials with a soft-focus haziness that recalls the tonal purity of Andrew Chalk and Jonathan Coleclough. Rather than extended drone floats, Chasse prefers to situate small events in which he gently smears his subtle sound recordings across stark white silences. Goddamn beautiful.
While certain labels (Meme, Trente Oiseaux) were a bit too slow and missed out on releasing this, we're certain that this wouldn't have had such amazing artwork (each cover is a different hand rubbing from a rough piece of wood... as opposed to the stark non-existent design work of either outfit) if Chasse hadn't put it out through his own imprint Unique Ancient Tavern. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oval, Disc, Autechre... Lots of folks like that digital glitch stuff -- we do too -- but how 'bout some analog 'glitch'? Good old fashioned record crackle! AQ friend and fave sound artist Loren Chasse's new solo release, his first for Anomalous, totally delves into the realm of crackle, from records and beyond. For details, we may as well quote directly from the label's press release (since our own Allan wrote it!):
"The work of sonic artist/investigator Loren Chasse (solo, Thuja, id Battery, Coelacanth and various manifestations of the 'Jewelled Antler collective') usually involves the documentation and manipulation of minute sound events (rubbings, scrapings, clickings) involving found objects and natural phenomena, emphasizing unexpected perspectives and connections. Even when performing in the psychedelic improv outfit Thuja, his 'instruments' primarily consist of contact mics, a mixer, some rocks and twigs, and his imagination. Loren's processed field recordings are fragile and full of strange beauty and feeling.
"Hedge of Nerves is dedicated to a friend of Loren's who dearly loves the sound of record crackle as it mingles with the music from a record's grooves. He also enjoys the sound of record crackle alone, as when an LP cycles on its run-out groove. Compact disc reissues of early 20th century ethnic music 78s, or Portishead, or Philip Jeck: if it's got that crackle, he likes it! So, this friend asked Loren to make him a recording of vinyl surface noise only, one that he could DJ with, mixing with non-crackly musical sources, to create virtual scratchy records. For this reason, the idea was to avoid any obvious looping, but to make a continuous, unbroken and organic field of crackle. Thus inspired, however, the project soon turned into more than that, as Loren decided that it was more interesting to emulate the sound and texture of record crackle using other sources. The resulting cd indeed begins by utilizing sounds from a scratchy old 78 rpm disc (one recorded by Loren's grandfather in the 1930s at NBC Radio) but also explores more 'elemental' crackling sounds derived from fire and wind and water, from rustling branches, waves, and sand. Hedge of Nerves is dynamic, moving from loud crinkly-crackly storming sound-swarms to the sounds of a wilderness quietly bristling. It's a mesmerizing expanse of hiss and drone, buzz and click, with hints of melody (from his grandfather's 78). The originating idea of surface noise is ever-present, but upon closer examination that 'surface' proves quite deep, something within which the listener will become submerged, blissful and fascinated. Hedge of Nerves is a masterpiece -- just ask Loren's grateful crackle-loving friend, who files it with the best of Philip Jeck, Jonathan Coleclough, M. Behrens, Troum, and other masters of detailed drone constructions."
As you might have guessed, that friend of Loren's is of course our own Allan...and he really does love this disc!! (And he did manage to use an advance version of this to DJ with at the Beyond The Pale festival last year -- it goes really well with Bo Hansson, actually.) Even if you're usually wary of some avantgarde academic "experimental" sterility, try this out anyway, it's warm and organic and inviting in a way many glitchy, noisy things are not, like a bonfire on a desolate, foggy sea-shore.
Loren's first solo cd! (not a cd-r, either)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
THERE'S A CD-R VERSION NOW AVAILABLE
A 60 minute tape of field recordings from Mr. Chasse's sabbatical to Pennsylvania this past summer. Humid atmospheres and fragmented sounds of stones scrapping across each other are accompanied by bittersweet piano and violin. While not intended to be as conceptually complete as some of Chasse's other albums (notably the brilliant Id Battery record for Ecstatic Peace), this a nice document into the working process into of the most underexposed sound artists.
During the past couple of years, San Francisco's Loren Chasse has split his time equally between textural minimalism, as found on his exceptional solo album "Exfolia Motors", and organic improvisations, as heard in Thuja as well as several other bands on the
"Fantasy Apparition" is a super limited CD-R pressed in an edition of only 200 and wrapped in hand screened burlap bag. So, when these are gone, they're gone.
There's no better way to visually represent the music of Jewelled Antler's Loren Chasse than with the various bits and fragments of nature's detritus, stones, pebbles, sticks, leaves, branches, dust and dirt. This newest release from Chasse goes a step further, encapsulating the disc itself (a little 3" cd) along with a sponge and a piece of lichen gathered from the German countryside in an actual petri dish, all in a sealed medical baggy. Wow. And the music inside is just as meticulously assembled as the packaging. Delicate and crystalline, intricate structures, microscopic movements, gentle reverberations, subtle scrapings, abstract shimmer and barely discernable micromelodies. It's almost impossible to tell which parts are natural ambience, and which parts are Chasse reacting and responding to nature, but that's what makes his work so vital and fascinating and what makes Script Lichen such an engrossing listen. And like the rest of Chasse's work, this is not something you just throw on (although you could), this music requires deep listening, active listening, the act of listening akin to a slow, exploratory wander through a sonic forest, every step causing brambles to shimmer and rub against each other, breezes to send leaves drifting earthward, the crunch of each step, the forest, and the earth around it, shifting slightly, the sonic evidence of such minute movements deftly captured by Chasse and reworked into a subtly different soundworld. So nice.
Each 3" cd comes packaged as we said in a petri dish with a sponge and a piece of lichen, wrapped in a medical baggy, every one with a sticker, and hand numbered. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!! We only got 50 and once those are gone this will be out of print and gone for good!
Loren Chasse (Id Battery, Thuja, Knit Separates) originally released "Synthesis of Neglected Places" as a limited edition cassette but has finally released a second pressing as a cdr. The majority of these recordings were made during Chasse's sabbatical in the
keeping up with Steve Roden's retro-grade process of being "experimentally incorrect" (where such 'pop' aphorisms of melody and Martin Baytes' baroque singing could be included with archetypal experimental techniques such as musique concrete), Chasse concludes his album with a beautiful selection of plaintive piano improvisations, rippling with a hazy production wash and tweeting birds in the distance. "Synthesis of Neglected Places" acts as a nice bridge between the droning
abstractions of his solo work and his collaboration in Thuja.
With all of those Jewelled Antler projects keeping AQ's dear friend Loren Chasse busy, it's no wonder that it took over three and half years for him to complete the follow up to his acclaimed 2002 album Hedge of Nerves. Yep, it's true that Loren has released two solo projects under the Jewelled Antler moniker Of; but he doesn't see work such as The Air In The Sand (or Hedge of Nerves, or anything from id battery or Coelacanth, for that matter) as being related to Jewelled Antler. Who are we to argue?
That said, Loren's solo work is made in pretty much the same manner as much of the Jewelled Antler work, particularly The Blithe Sons, where he treks up and down the Pacific Coast making tons of field recordings and then playing those recordings back in similar environments with small speakers and occasional accompaniments from rocks, sand, teasles, leaves, and the occasional alto recorder. Part of this process is an attempt to move away from the constraints of the digital workstation; but at the same time, Chasse is far more interested in the curious alchemy that occurs when a space listens to itself making sound. A nighttime chorus of crickets gurgles within aqueous percolations and the tectonic crash of surf crashing against rock. Rain vaporizes in a caustic sizzle as it falls upon overhead electrical wires, and this sound is compouned by the sharp crack of branches and the slow hiss of sand. For all of the elemental sounds that dominate his recordings, Chasse extracts subtle musical timbres and fragile half-melodies that haunt The Air In The Sand. Beautiful and timeless, this is another marvellous album from Mr. Chasse.
Loren Chasse is a man of many guises, while his recent solo releases being issued under the moniker Of for the past couple of years, his constant output via Jewelled Antler related projects has continued with his revolving presence in Thuja, Blithe Sons, Softwar, Ov, Kyrgyz, and many others. The work that Loren produces under his own name tends toward the sound art end of his aesthetic spectrum, closer to his work with Id Battery and Coelacanth than the field recordist approach to rural psychedelia found in those Jewelled Antler efforts. Throughout all of his sonic pursuits, Chasse's use of sound has always been to spark the imagination and generate a sense of mystery; and that is certainly the case here on The Footpath.
A dark cloud of rumbles and growls announces the beginning of this album, as Chasse grasps several heavy rocks in his hands and caresses their surfaces with sand, dirt, leaves, water, ash, and other debris. As is often the case, these recordings have been recorded outside with a contact microphone or two and a digital recorder. So the external sounds of the environment creep into these crackling textures and eroded drones. The lulling fluctuations of surf and wind are most common, indicative of Chasse's continued wanderings up and down the California coast. But, you will also find the buzzing slash of an insect chorus or the smoldering bristle from a campfire. Chasse deftly abstracts these softened noises without ever making them sound like they had been processed in the digital arena. Every piece here enjoys a wonderfully rough hewn quality with the edges torn, tattered, and frayed. Hints of the melodic phrasing which Chasse brings to Jewelled Antler pop up on sporadic occasion in small two note phrases, that only barely pass for melodies, emerging from the mire and debris, or with his zither buried within a cloud of tape hiss and bunker reverberations, replayed and re-recorded numerous times exacerbating all of that tactile crunch. Chasse's work always comes recommended, and The Footpath is no exception!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
SF dronologist Loren Chasse (from Id Battery) presents the first of what we hope will be many collaborations with multimedia artist Eleanor Harwood. This 30 minute video documents slow visual explorations of natural spaces as seen through a variety of chemical filters - a perfect visual parallel to Chasse's sound investigations. Oval-like mesmer constructed out of looping drones accompanies a slow-motion pan across the negative image of a stagnant lake, whose steady march is disrupted by a car speeding along a far away road. Distant almost Arvo Part-like chorales float with the wispy motion of two baren trees shaken by a steady wind. Very nice work.
Throughout the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the coastal mountains are dotted with countless bunkers which were built during World War II in anticipation of the Japanese invasion that never came. Nearly 70 years later, these bunkers have been weathered by wind, fog, rain, and of course the sodden folks who tromp through the Headlands on a daily basis. These concrete structures with small portals facing the Pacific all have amazing reverberant qualities; and it shouldn't be a surprise that the more frequented bunkers and passageways inevitably echo with the sound of children dying to hear their own voices tossed back to them. The Headlands have been a favored destinations for Loren Chasse, who has sought many of the lesser known and lesser travelled environs for field recordings and jam sessions that would eventually work their way into all things Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Franciscan Hobbies, The Blithe Sons, Of, Ov, etc.). In his recordings, Chasse extracts a profound mystery and grand sense of wonder from that echo, the bunker's grit, the soft recurrence of surf bleeding through those walls, and the distant bleat of a foghorn.
Back in 2005, Chasse took his fellow globetrotting wanderer Michael Northam to the Battery Townsley where the two set up long string wires and various handheld instruments to begin a series of recordings which took a few years to complete after Northam left California. The two did manage to meet up once again in Estonia, there exploring the Soviet industrial ruins that pock the Estonian landscape with similar intentions. Out of the bramble of overgrown weeds, rebar, concrete, dirt, rock, wind, and water, Chasse and Northam straddle those psychedelic leanings of Jewelled Antler and the more studied aspects of minimalism.
The Otolith begins with an acoustic clamor, as if billions of iron filings were brushing against each other under the direction of a couple of hefty magnets, before shifting into a harmonium blur of sustained tones hinting at a melody well beneath these clouds of tousled energy. Softer drones and Aeolian fragments flutter forth out of bowed strings and gently tapped gongs amidst a golden hue of opiated atmospherics. Scrabblings across the surfaces of leaves, rocks, mud, and metal fuse with field recordings of wind and water, as a continuing demonstration of Chasse's alchemy with naturalist sound to bring forth stately ragas and dreamtime psychedelic lullabies. Chasse and Northam work amazingly well together, having produced this thoroughly amazing album. Think Popul Vuh, Parson Sound, Pandit Pran Nath, Harry Bertoia, and Erc La Casa. Totally beautiful and mesmerizing.
We got a very very very few of these. It is after all limited to a mere 50 copies. Chasse completists and Jewelled Antler obsessives, as well as fans of gorgeous abstract field recordings, it's a race to see who can grab one of these before they're gone.
Chasse's piece is 10 minutes long and begins with a burst of static, but as you might imagine, that's not static at all, it's more likely a field recording of wind in branches, or water traveling over a rocky stream bed. The sound soon fades, and then rest of the track is a constantly shifting soundscape of textures and timbres, many recognizable, many not, but all of them strangely musical. Such is the magic touch Chasse has with field recordings, an alchemist who with a handful of sticks and some pebbles can conjure up a beautiful world of earthy sound.
Sonderberg is a member of the Chicago based sound-project Haptic with Steven Hess; and his half with Katherine Young is not quite as serene as Chasse's, a sound field rife with squeaks and creaks and thumps and Geiger counter like clicks, the sound shifting from spare and skeletal to thick and hissy and almost distorted, all underpinned by a weird low end almost electronic sounding thrum.
Really nice, but as mentioned above, we have VERY FEW of these, it's almost out of print, and once they are gone, we will not be able to get more.
Cool packaging too. A 3" cd-r affixed to a small block of wood, wrapped in s sheet of clear plastic, attached on one side with little nails, and velcro on the other, the liner notes a sticker beneath the plastic, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES.
In 2005 the city of Paris commissioned avant-composer and no-wave legend Rhys Chatham to orchestrate and conduct a piece to be played in the basilica of Sacre-Coeur, the largest church in France. Chatham took this amazing opportunity to have his piece A Crimson Grail performed for this first time. The piece calls for 400 electric guitars!!! In a Basilica!! Holy Shit!! Rhys Chatham and 400 electric guitars = get ready to be blasted by unrelenting noise, right? WRONG! Somehow Chatham manages to use this army of guitars to make one of his most beautiful and celestial pieces to date. The guitars come together to create a glistening wall of sound that had to make those 10,000 in attendance simply melt into their seats. Exciting to hear what could have been overblown bombast, and a flexing of too much guitar muscle turned into a subtle and shimmering work that creates space and tension and emotion and seeps right into your soul. Last year was chock full of great Chatham reissues, we couldn't get enough, so it's thrilling to start the new year not with a reissue, but a brand new piece as thrilling as anything Chatham has ever done. So totally stunning!
A Crimson Grail is one of our favorite massive guitar ensemble compositions of all time, and now getting to hear a different version of it, recorded outdoors at the Lincoln Center with 200 guitarists brings us back once again to the totally sublime beauty of the piece. The way Chatham is able to compose and conduct that army of guitarists to be both so subtle and explosive at just the right moments is a testament to his talent, and another reminder that he really his one of the most exciting and incredible composers around. There is a patience in this piece that really allows you to slowly enter the zone, until you have no choice but to follow wherever the shimmering sounds of all these guitars take you.�
We're also glad for this release 'cause the previous recording of this piece, on Table Of The Elements, seems to be out of print these days. And extra cool is that our pal and WFMU music director Brian Turner was one of the guitarists at this performance, we can only imagine what a chill inducing experience it would be to be a part of creating this sonic beauty!
There are many reasons why somebody needs to smack some sense into Table Of The Elements, with this compendium of Rhys Chatham's work being simply the latest episode of marketing blunders. Sometime in the future, Table Of The Elements has plans to release a
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetitive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams. Occasionally the dense horn jams remind us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB.
This disc, the 5 part title track, starts off with a dense brassy drone that sounds a bit like Niblock composing for an army of trumpets or a little bit like later records by Dutch metallers Gore. That jam quickly slips into a sleepy krautrock groove before drifting off. The second movement is a blissed out brass drone beneath a dynamic mathrock workout, stacatto bursts demarcating a wide open expense of reverberent whir. The third movement is straight up Stereolab / Neu!, a loping post rock rhythm, a dreamy sunshiney melody, all propulsive and hypnotic. Next up is a much more dissonant slab of twentieth century angularity, an amorphous cloud of swirling notes and thick washes of orchestra-tuning-up clatter and cacophony. The final movement sounds like Circle or Salvatore or Tortoise or Zombi, but with strange synthy swooshes, like bits of Chariots Of Fire or something. Driving and almost rocking, totally mesmerizing and head nodding.
While this stuff is obviously of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
Another gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled artifact from Table Of The Elements. This time chronicling, albeit in edited form, the career of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose carreer seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glen Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway. Plenty to take in here. An amazingly comprehensive booklet with notes on each piece as well as a fascinating artist's diary that Chatham kept during the seventies, eighties and nineties. And three discs chock full of some truly gorgeous music. The interesting thing, to me at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, the tracks here sound a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetetive intros build and build, until the band launches into propulsive Krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams. There are also some pieces for multiple horns that are really gorgeous, repetitive and woozy. Militaristic drums underpin seasick melodies over rumbling low end bass drones with the horns playing a warbly, wavery melody over and over. Reminds me of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB's. The first disc though is worth the price of the box alone. The entirety of disc one is taken up by the piece 'Two Gongs", where two huge gongs are beaten, rubbed, bowed, struck and shaken to produce an unbelievably rich, rumbling, moaning drone, with overtones that shift restlessly and endlessly changing the emotions of the piece every second. Dark and langorous, deep and powerful. Fans of the recent Karen Stackpole gongs 12" we listed a few lists back will love this, as will fans of Flynt, Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone. But like we mentioned before, the other two discs may also appeal to adventurous post/pop rockers into Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore as well as folks into krautrock/free rock/space rock.
MPEG Stream: "An Angel Moves Too Fast To See - Prelude" [/audio/chathamangelprelude.m3u]
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetetive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams.
This disc begins with the slow building epic title track, all keening guitars and droning sustain, peppered with splashes of jazzy percussion and extra layers of chordal warmth, but like most of Chatham's pieces, it eventually kicks into a groovy post rock / krautrock jam, driving drums, soaring melodies, all with a blissed out fuzzy sheen. Definite shades of Stereolab and Circle on this one. "Waterloo #2" is the track that reminds us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB. Martial drumming and dense horn figures float above. Up next is the scuzzy garage stomp of "Drastic Classicism", nods to Faust and Can but with plenty of distorted guitar scuzz and atonal fuzz rock jangle. The minimalism here is in the relentless repeated main riff, building to a blissed out jam, similar to the way black metal riffs at their most buzzy fuzz out into epic dronescapes. But Chatham's take is more like some sort of Stooges/Brainbombs drone. Cool. "Guitar Trio" is another spacious post rock jam, guitars hover and float, chords and notes ring out and drift into and around each other, supported by a simple solid rhythm. Finally, things finish off with Chatham's infamous "Massacre On MacDougal Street", a nearly twenty minute long, horn / percussion freak out, with honking skronking horns moaning and screeching and warbling, weaving dense stretches of marching band repetition and long slow stretches of moaning and groaning drones, all above BIG percussion, booming toms, miltary snares, chaotic drum fills and spurts of complex tribalism. The perfect soundtrack for some insane sixties psychedelic horror film. Full of tension and minor key atonalism. Intense!
While this stuff is obviousl of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Excessive minimalism?! For the thirty year anniversary of the release of Rhys Chatham's seminal musical manifesto, Guitar Trio, a piece that married avant minimalism to No Wave punk aesthetics, Chatham made a five stop tour (Brooklyn, Chicago, Buffalo, Toronto, and Montreal) recruiting a star studded cast of musicians at each location. Brooklyn featured members of Sonic Youth and Jonathan Kane; Chicago featured members of Tortoise; Montreal, members of God Speed! You Black Emperor, and so on. Table of The Elements has released this whopping three disc set documenting both parts of the piece at each locale. Those not familiar with "Guitar Trio", the piece is basically three or more guitarists (sometimes up to 14), a bass player and a drummer, playing the same chord (an Em7) roughly to the rhythm of "My Baby does the Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and the Shondells. Starting with one guitar player, the others join in and the piece soon builds into a wall of buzzing harmonic overtones. Part two repeats the structure but faster with more driving drums. It's an amazing piece no doubt, and important surely in the scheme of musical breakthroughs (i.e it's so simple, it's genius!). But despite the star power wielding the axes and sticks, and the microtonally subtle nuances of all those harmonic overtones, there is extremely little variation in listening to five versions of the same one chord piece. Making this triple cd set more of a souvenir document of an event than an essential listen.
We were pleased and privileged to host minimalist composer Rhys Chatham for a signing last week while he was in town for his performance of A Secret Rose for 100 guitars at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond. He was so nice, cheerful, and engaged (he signed Scott's vinyl copy of Factor X, his first release, and even offered to do his chart, as apparently astrology is one of Chatham's many passions!). Harmonie Du Soir is his latest release, and features two side long tracks. The cd has a 10 minute bonus track, "Drastic Classicism Revisited", which is also included with the digital download that comes with the vinyl. The first, title track begins with a piece for six electric guitars, bass and drums, the same arrangement as Die Donnergotter from 1986, and is a return to form, back to Chatham's early eighties minimalist deconstruction of rock music tropes where the composition seemingly glides along one chord structure yet the arrangement between instruments remains dynamically fluid. The second track/side, "The Dream Of Rhonabwy" is a twenty minute piece written for a seventy piece French brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, that is a moving and plaintive piece using slow martial rhythms and sustained tones with amazing flourishes to evoke a dreamlike textural tapestry of sound. So beautiful. Then, bonus cut "Drastic Classicism Revisited", like the title suggests, is a return to an early no-wave-ish whirlwind composition of sustained fast drumming and epic guitar squall. Fantastic!
Rhys Chatham in free jazz horn mode.
A gorgeous new lp recording from the venerable minimalist composer Rhys Chatham, who in the recent past in New York and Paris has been staging, and revisiting, his multiple guitar orchestras (sometimes numbering in the hundreds!), performing his long form pieces of large repetitive clusters of sound. However, on Reve Parisian, Chatham returns to solo trumpet after a nearly twenty year hiatus from the instrument. Unlike his martial horn compositions of the eighties and nineties, the four pieces here are delicately layered cloud-like compositions of horn tones that billow and pulsate in rich harmonic textures and atmospheres. The first three tracks on side 1 are improvisational pieces for solo trumpet that build tonal free jazz passages into airy fields of circular momentum. The side long piece on side two, "Un Chanson Si Vieille" however, was composed for multiple trumpets resulting in a plaintive and moving piece where the lush warm wind tones weave a gossamer like sound environment that eventually no longer seems like horns at all. It reminds us somewhat of Harold Budd's instrumental collaboration with members of The Cocteau Twins, where tendril like vibrational layers of treated piano and guitar combined in a vast misty breath-like condensation of sound, yet Chatham creates these tones solely through the use of horns to wonderfully stunning effect. Originally created as a sonic component to a visual art show by collaborator Jacob Kassey, the lp is packaged in a stunning gatefold with an arced die-cut cover, and is limited to 1000 copies. Recommended!
Previously available only in the now out of print triple cd set An Angel Moves Too Fast To See: Selected Works 1971-1989, "Two Gongs", that set's highlight is finally available as a single disc.
Two huge gongs are beaten, rubbed, bowed, struck and shaken to produce an unbelievably rich, rumbling, moaning drone, with overtones that shift restlessly and endlessly changing the emotions of the piece every second. Dark and languorous, deep and powerful. Fans of that Dielectric Karen Stackpole gongs 12" we listed a year or two back will love this, as will fans of Flynt, Maclise, Cale, Coleclough, Organum and other masters of the mighty drone. So awesome.
Oh how we hate spoken word. Bad poetry, dramatic readings, in all but a very very very very few rare cases, spoken word = BAD. But then this is not your average spoken word record. In fact it's not even strictly a spoken word record. It's a modern minimal electronic record, made with voices instead of electronics. Closer to someone like Jaap Blonk, that is if someone recorded Blonk's bizarre poetry and then chopped it all up and reassembled it into complex rhythms.
Sound poet Anne James Chaton has been collecting receipts and train tickets, newspaper headlines, and various other seemingly mundane bits of text, specifically related to rare media related occasions, in the case of these recordings, specifically Barack Obama becoming president, and the death of the 'king of pop' Michael Jackson.
Much like those sound exercises where a phrase is repeated until it becomes a jumble of nonsense syllables, these pieces are paced on short spoken pieces, which are recorded, cut up, and reassembled into human beatbox style hyper rhythmic arrangements. The result is strangely hypnotic, not just the words, but the percussive elements of recorded speech are transformed into lurching, stuttery, skittering beats, the jumble of rhythmic vocals peppered with brief snippets of the original phrase, creating weirdly meditative trancelike expanses of rhythmic speech, or speech based techno, or whatever you want to call it.
Baffling and brilliant, this stuff would sound so amazing mixed randomly into a DJ set, but it's also some serious headphone bliss, it's so easy to get totally lost, letting the words and sounds, the sibilance and phrasing, the pulse and throb of these textual rhythms transport you to some strange world where sound and speech, music and words, blur into something wholly other.
Also included are shorter loops, presumably so you can assemble your own rhythmic word workout....
This is the first we've heard from this New Orleans psychedelic combo, even though this is their third record, but it's as good a place to start as any, cuz it's hard to imagine any of the other records competing with the sheer sonic scope of East Of The Sun & West Of The Moon, a sprawling double lp (which was supposedly trimmed down from a QUINTUPLE lp!!), literally years in the making, which finds the band touching on all sorts of different sounds, but all the various sonic strains held together by a thread of cosmic psychedelia that runs through the whole record. The opener, "Narconaut", should have space rock nerds losing their shit, totally druggy and drifty, the bass and drums locked tight into a loping groove, while the guitars fill the sky with wild tangles of FX heavy swirls and squiggles, clouds of swirling psychedelia, that drifts from heady and ethereal to churning and heavy. The record unwinds gradually, the second track, a smoldering bit of mathiness, rife with twang, and spidery minor key melodies, and laced with a bit of Appalachia, but building to a serious heavy crescendo before slipping into a brief bit of country, only to return to the mathiness of the opening few minutes. From there the band drift into weird woozy horn driven slowburn balladry, a washed out blues, wreathed in loads of echo and reverb, giving it a serious dub vibe, only to then slip into a brief bit of rhythmic churn, which quickly transitions into some drum driven, almost IDM sounding electronica, but that electronica is wedded to the band's brooding drifting psychedelia, there's even some sampled voices, which gives it a definite Boards Of Canada feel.
"Oxen Of The Sun" is one of the record's two centerpieces, an 11+ minute jam that flits from sound to sound, beginning as a dense chunk of buzzing space rock, driven by low slung bass and wheezing organs, it soon gives way to a sort of blurred countryish drone/drift, which in turn becomes a haunting elegy of organ drone, before exploding into some seriously heavy super distorted psychrock, that itself shifts from dense driving pound, to spaced out abstract shuffle and back again. "Ganymede" is the other one, clocking in at more than 19 minutes, this one less all over the map, a lush organ/synth/keyboard dronescape, softly roiling, spacious and kosmische, gradually building to the occasional Sunroof! like ur-drone, only to slip right back into something much more serene and pastoral. It's a fantastically heady chunk of droned out psych bliss for sure.
The rest of the record continues the group's sonic explorations, more heavy psych space outs, bits of droned out minimal guitarscapery, woozy, slide guitar laced twang flecked drifts, pocked with slow build to explosive psychedelic squalls, dark strummed folk that gives way to some seriously dense and druggy psychedelia, and a final bit of spare steel string guitar, a little coda, surprisingly spare, considering how dense and sprawling and ambitious the rest of the record is.
WAY recommended, and pretty much essential listening for all you psychedelic space phreaks out there,
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Super elaborately packaged, in deluxe gatefold jackets, each one printed and hand numbered by the artist, the art a handmade woodblock print, includes a digital download.
A while back, we reviewed a gorgeous double lp from a New Orleans outfit called Chef Menteur, whose sound was a gorgeously blissed out psychedelic sprawl, all drugged out space rock and hazy shimmery drones, brooding psych-kraut and lush pastoral ambience. We sold a ton, and figured that maybe that just might have been it. But finally, here's a cassette-only follow up, and right out of the gate, it's another stunner. The opener is a hushed drift, all abstract Appalachia, wheezing harmonica, muted chordal thrum, sculpted feedback, like the prettiest Sunroof! track ever, a sort of spaced out raga, pulled apart into something even more ethereal and abstract, gorgeous and meditative and dreamlike. We figured that maybe the band had shifted their sound, and embraced their lighter, more ethereal side, but then in swoops the second track, with a rapid fire rhythmic melody, some almost funky bass, and some swirling electronics, quickly building into a sort of psych-funk that reminds us a lot of Swedish outfit Goat, which is definitely not a bad thing. As the song unwinds, the sound expands, adding more and more layers, extra instrumentation, eventually getting pretty dang heavy, with some swirling organ, building to a fierce finale.
"Death Wraith 2000" is a much darker and heavier beast, sounding like something on Cardinal Fuzz, murky riffage, swirling psychedelia, pounding drums, the sound shifting from dark and tribal, to wild and noisy and seriously freaked out. The rest of the tape finishes off two more heavy psych groovers, the first a lush, slow building Godspeed style space rocker, with gorgeous long stretches of moody minimalism, between the more in-the-red bombast, while the second and final track, brings the organ back in, things get droned out and trancey, a little bit noisy, a sort of garage prog that eventually mutates into a gorgeous stretch of soft noise, before one final blast of psychedelic space rock crush.
Probably super limited, we have a handful...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of psychedelic textural soft-noise sonic experimentation from this local duo, who swing from heavy crunch to blissed out drift, this particular sonic session captured live on the radio, on the always awesome KFJC...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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George Chen is responsible for so many cool things in the Bay Area. Whether it's helping keep the all-ages scene alive with Club Sandwich, injecting life into zine culture, championing all sorts of weird and unusual music, etc. So it's kind of easy to forget that the man is also quite an awesome music maker himself, for proof just check out records he's been on in bands like 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Common Eider King Eider, Voltz, etc.
Teamed up with Steve Santa Maria the two have put together quite a potent concoction of damaged, haunting and often gorgeous textural sounds that rank right up there with folks like Taiga Remians, Simon Wickham-Smith and Birchville Cat Motel. Collapsing electronics, fractured guitar, seamless samples and primitive drum machines all come together to create sounds that would make the perfect soundtrack to a mysterious and brooding post-apocalyptic experimental film. These are sounds of machines on their last legs, creeping and crawling through fields of grit and grime and buzz and glitch trying to survive. Their affiliation with the East Bay noise scene can be heard on some of the more squelching and stuttering moments here, but they also have a more subtle side to their sound that is more dreamy and drifting keeping things drifting and spacey and oh so hypnotic!
If you live in the bay area and don't know who George Chen is, we can safely say you've been locked in a windowless room for the past decade, surviving only on bread crust and lint. For those of you who fall under the above condition and have not had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Chen, he is a huge organizer of all kinds of all ages events and get togethers in the bay area, and has been on the road with all kinds of people from Grey Daturas to Common Eider King Eider. He also makes some seriously awesome music under the name Chen Santa Maria, usually of the noise freak-out persuasion. And this collaboration between Chen Santa Maria and Luuse is no exception, almost an hour of live sonic exploration from these dudes, relentless and all the while totally immersive and huge. Recommended!
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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.
The latest in the Mystery Sea label's ongoing exploration of "night-ocean drones", which as we've mentioned in the past, is precisely what these discs sound like. Dark, moonlit nights, rippling black seas, and drones, glorious drones!
Cherry Beach Project is the Canadian duo of Joda Clement and Nigel Craig, and Silo II was indeed recorded in a silo, at Cherry Beach, an industrial wasteland, on an abandoned peninsula in Toronto, know as a place, where "off the record" police activities occur, and all manner of crime. The area has since been demolished, but on the nights of recording, the duo were forced to abandon their equipment in the midst of some sort of violence, forced to return the next day to retrieve their equipment, only to be pursued by several unidentified men. With that sort of story behind the recording of Silo II, one might expect something more jagged, or harsh, or extreme, but instead, the sounds here, are glistening and delicate, massive stretches of shimmering space separating low end thrums and sparkling upper register glimmers, each note hovering gently like dust motes caught in moonbeams. Drops of water, send sonic ripples skyward, deep cavernous groans and distant chimes swirl lazily in wide open fields of reverb, huge barely audible rumbles permeate the proceedings, offering up subtle sonic support, bumps and random percussive thumps surface occasionally out of near silence, but just as quickly fade away. Definite nods to Japanese field recordists Toshiya Tsunoda, as the silo is as much a part of the action as the sounds created within it. So mysterious and dark, spacious and abstract, minimal and haunting.
Like all Mystery Sea releases, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered, and gorgeously packaged in striking full color artwork.
Never heard of the Cherry Blossoms? Neither had we, but some quick digging around revealed that they are a damaged abstract free folk jugband from Tennessee, and that for this here disc, they were joined by none other than folk songstress Josephine Foster for a dizzying, tripped out experimental folk freeforall. Foster fans should be well prepared to not expect only gentle strumming, dreamy torch songs, and Appalachian fingerpicking, while some of that stuff is present, Foster spends as much time wading through dizzying folk flecked soundworlds that have way more in common with the No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man or Avarus. But even compared to those far out cats, some of this sounds pretty dang unhinged.
Thee opening track is a minimal chaotic swirl of random clatter, detuned guitar strum and scrape, and a dense cloud of tangled voices, a druggy psychedelic choir, voices all intertwined, crooning and cooing, careening back and forth, wild and confusional, eventually coalescing into a drug folk lament right at the end, before drifting into the next track, a wandering atonal folk jam, the guitar stumbling and detuned, jaw harp, more kitchen sink clatter, and those vocals again, not your typical harmonies, ghostly and mildly atonal, the main male vocal, a lazy drawl, wandering through a forest of feminine chanting and falsetto ooh's and ahh's. A lot of this sounds like genuine old timey music, that became corrupted as it was transmitted forward through time from the old days, everything coming through slightly twisted and tweaked, the vocals wavery and haunting, the guitars slightly out of tune, the drums more a splatter of percussion than actual rhythm, the whole record wavers druggily from dreamy damaged folk to abstract drone and strum, back and forth, often multiple times in the same song. On first listen, it's definitely strange and off putting, but a few songs in, we couldn't help but be carried off, lulled into a strange trance, by these mesmerizingly off kilter lullabies.
