"Last year's Old Testament album by Antifrost founder Ilios terrified me with its sudden bursts of hideous, twisted noise cleaving through passages of near silence. As the first ten minutes of this new piece progressed in minimally hushed fashion, I found myself hiding behind the sofa, waiting with buttocks clenched for the inevitable onslaught. However, the 'electric wind' here is a soft spray of radio static that radiates around either side of the few events that occur over the album's 45 minutes, muted slow motion explosions that melt into rumbling downward glissandi reminiscent of Stockhausen's Hymen. The bulk of the listening time is taken up with the fallout from these foregrounded episodes, an unsettling, disorientating experience." -- Keith Moline / The Wire
Expanded, remastered reissue of this French guitarist's first album, originally released in 1978. Thierry Muller (for he is Ilitch) makes use of "destructured" guitar, droning organ, harmonium, tapes, synth, etc. to create dark, electronic soundscapes comparable to countrymen Heldon or a scarier Fripp/Eno. Experimental, atmospheric stuff indeed. Primitive, eerie, abstract, sometimes violent. This double disc set includes the previously unreleased third and fourth sides of what was originally intended to be double LP, as well as quite a lot of other bonus material, all of it equally nightmarish and excellent. Trainspotters should note that Ilitch is one of the avant-garde obscurities that appeared on the notorious Nurse With Wound list found on NWW's first album, along with much other seminal krautrock/noise/experimental weirdness, more and more of which is thankfully being reissued every day...
Just recently on our New Arrivals list (in our Record of the Week review of the Vertigo Mixed compilation) we mentioned (again) how much we love prog. Combine that with how much we also love the music of UK songwriter and experimentalist Richard Youngs, and you can imagine how excited we are by this brand new Ilk offering. Canticle is the unexpected second album from Richard Youngs' long-dormant "prog" project Ilk, a band (of sorts -- it's just Youngs and collaborator Andrew Paine, though we don't remember if Paine was involved with the first Ilk cd from 1999) that celebrates both the idea of '70s British progressive rock epics (including the pretentiousness of narration and the like) and the related field of pastoral folk-psych. Which isn't too far from what Richard Youngs is often all about anyway. Anyone familiar with his two most recent solo albums, the AQ faves Airs Of The Ear and River Through Howling Sky, will find much that's familiar about Ilk's Canticle. There's gorgeous melodic material on here, Richard's honest English voice accompanied by gentle acoustic guitar for some stuff with a moving, quasi-religious tone... but the intentionally, overtly "prog" aspect is borne out by tracks like "A Guiding Principle", which consists of a scrambled jumble of guitar, drums, and electronics, something like the Dead C playing a free jazz version of Relayer by Yes on 45! These more active, electric "prog" and "rock" elements interact interestingly throughout the album with the folk/drone loveliness we've come to expect from Youngs, for a listen that satisfies both our love of "classic" prog in general and the not so easily catagorized work of fellow prog-lover Richard Youngs in the particular. Recommended!
More fringe electronica from the UK. Seems to be quite a healthy electronic music scene over there. How come we only hear from Scanner and Spooky and Pita and Fennesz ad infinitum when there's so much more to draw from? Guess these guys (like AQ faves
Installment number two from this mysterious UK electronic outfit, who as we have stated before) is part of the underground electronic scene that no one seems to be taking notice of. EP2 takes up where EP1 left off, pulsing buzzing hiss over squealing instruments and distant melodies, pounding video game big beats over buzzes and bleeps and blips, creepy rumbly ambience, spacey drones and hypnotic pulses, and a super spare 10 minute final track of minimal blips and clicks, pulses and whirrs that are occasionally overtaken by insectoid buzz and gorgeous minor key synth washes.
Illusion Of Safety records have been slow coming in recent years, but IOS mastermind Dan Burke has been hinting at a whole slew of new material forthcoming. All of which should be very good news for all who have followed his work over the years. Since 1983, Burke has been producing an occasionally volatile, often sublime, and almost always exceptional body of work that prominently figures into the history of industrial culture and the ensuing explorations of noise, dronemuzik, and electro-acoustic collages from the mid-'80s onward. There had long been a sense of violence and transgression in the Illusion Of Safety catalogue, yet the overt displays of psychological horrors that appeared on such albums as Historical have gradually sublimated into the more inquisitive and arguably more compelling albums such as In Opposition To Our Acceleration and here on Bridges Intact.
A room recording of piano, feedback, guitar, and electronics opens the album, as Burke presents a collaborative piece with one of the long-time contributors to Illusion Of Safety, in Thymme Jones (who fronts the idiosyncratic art-rock combo Cheer Accident). At first the piano and the guitar spiral atonal clusters around the droning feedback tones, but after a transition through a series of clattering objects, the piano swarms into a dynamic blur of Terry Riley / Charlemagne Palestine inspired minimalism. Very impressive! Electricified buzzes and tremolo flutterings scatter around another set of bleary guitar drones whose tendrils of shimmered tone and vaporous ephemerality lead to a haunted, levitating quality to the piece, as if everything were hovering around the participants in a seance. This isn't a haunting on the demonic scale, but something more sublime and peculiar. Burke shifts more towards an intense stream of mechanoid pulses, electrical whirls, pierced tones, rarified static, and heavily amplified microsonic vibrations. Here, IOS has more of the research & development experimentation that you would get from the likes of Joe Colley or John Duncan. As Burke ducks and weaves through his tangles of crossed wires, tactile crunches, and short-circuited electronics, the breadth of his ability to produce such an extraordinary variety of electro-acoustic expressionism becomes very evident.
It should also be noted that the Russian label Waystyx has produced some elaborate packaging with two fold-out panels with numerous die-cuts that give the folio the appearance of an old steel truss bridge. Limited and numbered to 324 copies.
The vinyl of Fin De Siecle came out in 1995 through the Korm Plastics label, who only pressed up 250 copies as something for the band to take on tour in Europe. In many ways, this was a parallel album to the sublime drone constructions that Illusion Of Safety produced on the unheralded masterpiece Of & The, whose foggy netherworld of found sounds crossed with haunted ambience was prescient of the albums that Mirror, Kevin Drumm, and The Caretaker would produce many years later. Illusion Of Safety had been operational for about a decade when this record originally came out, first building very ominous post-industrial constructions laced with toxic noise and unsettling media samples; but by the early '90s, IOS became far more sophisticated through subtle uses of musique concrete and psychoacoustic strategies. Records like Probe and Cancer are indicative of this approach leading to the more introspective and contemplative albums of the mid '90s, including Fin De Siecle.
The liner notes from revolving door Illusion Of Safety member Kurt Griesch mentions being unhappy with the outcome of the LP, as much of the material needed to be edited and revised to fit on vinyl. In revisiting the material, Illusion Of Safety chose to leave what was found on the LP intact and bracket those tracks with two newer pieces (one about three minutes long, the other over twenty-five) serving as a re-imagined framework. The first cut builds a screeching collage of metal-upon-metal and compacted rumblings ramping quickly to a corroded crescendo that snaps to a loud amplification of a runout groove on a piece of vinyl. This brief interlude of acoustic noises stand in stark contrast to the rest of album, which glides weightlessly in and out of the dreamy glassine drone of pre-waking ambience, stretching out the cybernetic dreamtime heard only in brief sketches on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. As an ambient record, Fin De Siecle does have its moments of dislocation and upheaval with a growling snarl of impulsive thrumming at the end of "Part One" and some gritty field recordings of an industrial wasteland devoid of any human emerging in "Part Three." Even on their prettiest and most graceful album, Illusion Of Safety find a way to make their proceedings unsettling.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While this album came out way back in the early 90's, Illusion Of Safety's "Historical" is a great album to see what a 19 year-old kid from Chicago named Jim O'Rourke did to keep himself busy. At the time of this recording the revolving door membership of Illusion Of Safety also included Dan Burke (the mainstay for IOS) and Thymme Jones (later of You Fantastic, Brise Glace, and a handful of other Chicago no-wave revivalist groups). "Historical" opens and closes with blasts of industrial strength plunderphonics, recontextualizing Public Enemy, Simm City, Slayer, and big band horn blasts into synthetic rhythms. But the reason to get the album is for the 45 minutes or so of dark harsh droning reminiscent of the best work of John Duncan. Go ahead I dare you to buy it to play right after Jim O'Rourke's "Eureka".
Back in the early '90s, a 19 year old kid made his first mark upon music as "the guitarist from Illusion Of Safety." That kid then went on to produce a couple of interesting records amongst his huge catalogue of sonic eccentricities, always seeming to be in the
Anyway, Dan Burke founded Illusion of Safety in the mid '80s as a schizophrenic continuation of Industrial Culture as a theatrical means of exposing the cracks within culture and human nature. It is true that a good number of the early Illusion Of Safety albums haven't aged all that well (including a number that O'Rourke worked on!); but Burke and his rotating core of collaborators certainly learned what worked (manipulated field recordings and disturbed ambience) and what didn't (grim media sound bites and hamfisted electro-shock rhythms). "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" finds a matured Illusion Of Safety deftly constructing psycholological tense atmospheres from amplified electrical currents, found sounds, microtonal guitar pluckery, and unnerving drones. The pinnacle of the album occurs during a collage from the chinese water torture of a very slow leak dripping into a bucket, alongside a distant choral chant and some nervous sustained tones. A few of the tracks do vector off into the MAX / MSP territory of timestretching samples and glitch fragmentation, but fits nicely into the textural potency of the album as a whole. Along with "Cancer" and "Probe", "In Opposition To Our Acceleration" is one of the best Illusion Of Safety albums.
The first proper record from Illusion Of Safety in well over 5 years emerges from the Russian label Waystyx, meaning that this will not be around for long and will not be easy for us to track down once these are gone. Just a caveat before we launch into the, um, virtues of this exercise in muscular electronics and brainmelting dronescaping. Illusion Of Safety began well over two decades ago, firmly embracing the death factory imagery and psychological tension that came through the work of Throbbing Gristle, John Duncan, and The Hafler Trio. While the grizzly subjects of torture and sexual violence have dissolved over time, Illusion Of Safety's interest in unsettled soundscapes, collages, and electronic walls of noise remain as powerful as ever. Illusion Of Safety has always been a revolving door project centered around Chicago's Dan Burke; and In Session finds Burke alone at the helms of Illusion Of Safety, concocting a dizzying series of arcing electroshock compositions filled with intense dynamics and rapid crescendos of incremental noise quickly nosediving into subharmonic tones and microtonal squiggles, with plenty of slow building elements in between. The piercing drones that dominate the Illusion Of Safety palette are matched with crumbled textures from electronic circuits on the verge of collapse (see Wolf Eyes, Carlos Giffoni) and contact microphone agitation (see Tarab, Eric La Casa, Loren Chasse, etc.). There's one track of grim psychedelic arpeggiations which sounds as if Prurient were attempting a Terry Riley piece, with bad intentions running through the phase shifting loops. Totally fantastic, if not totally disquieting!
Dan Burke has presented a considerable number of facades for Illusion Of Safety over the past 25 years, with sublimated horror, brain-melting minimalism, crushed noise, and disjointed rhythms filtering through a post-industrial wasteland of sound. So, it's no surprise that his performance at the 2008 No Fun Fest touched on some of the many landmarks that Illusion Of Safety has carved out in its distinguished history, while making plenty of other detours at the same time. The tape opens with a quintessential Illusion Of Safety collage of scattershot media samples punctured by short extracts of blast beats and frenzied riffage that fragments and distorts into empty passages marked by tactile creaks, wooden sighs, and strange squishing sounds. Dense low-end throbbings and noxious rumbles quickly accelerate through these suspended concrete elements, snapping to a halt with a razor sharp crescendo, offering forth another set of field recordings and electronic squiggling. Burke continues along a similar strategy, revealing a wide array of peculiar sonic juxtapositions for one of his most decentered compositions. Side two moves from a horror soundtrack vernacular of wind-up toy twinklings smeared out of existence through grey flecks of shortwave crackle and plenty of Derbyshire-ish sci-fi gloop. Later on, an ominous drone from a lurking bass tone flashes a radiant glow and overlapping guitar sourced forms - growing rhizomatically in all sorts of complex directions and digitalized abstractions. Perhaps the closest that Burke has taken his work to the surreal horror collage of Nurse With Wound, irr. app. (ext.), and HNAS. Limited to 100 copies.
With nothing to go on but my memory, I remember there being an interview with Illusion of Safety in a 1989 or 1990 Option magazine in which IOS frontman Dan Burke admitted that his fanboy infatuation with Throbbing Gristle (especially seeing them play live in 1981) was the catalyst to begin Illusion of Safety. After a number of cassette only releases, Illusion Of Safety's first LP was "More Violence and Geography" released originally on Burke's Complacency Records in 1988 in conjunction with RRRecords. While I've not heard the album until now, the references to Throbbing Gristle still hold true and may actually serve the band better due to an increasing historical awareness of the continuum of Industrial music. Considering that 'Industrial' music in 1988 meant Ministry, Front 242, and Skinny Puppy, Illusion of Safety's revisitation to TG's snarling noise, wicked humor, and predilection of morbid theme was relatively novel. With smatterings of militant drum machine stomps, dissonant dive-bomb guitar noise, scraping metal, and media cut-ups revealing disturbing narratives about political torture, mass murders, insanity, and other socially deviant themes, Illusion of Safety crafted an unnerving album firmly planted in the traditions of the Industrial pioneers (TG, SPK, Monte Cazzaza, etc.). Jim O'Rourke trainspotters should take heed, although he was a member of IOS, as he wasn't at the time of the recording of "More Violence and Geography," whose line up included Burke, Mark Klein, Mark Sorensen, Mitch Enderle, and Chris Block.
A very rare document indeed, but somehow we managed to get a hold a very limited number of this tour-only cd-r originally released back in 2001. This is a collection of unreleased tracks from the seminal post-industrial and horror drone act Illusion Of Safety. The opening number finds IOS figurehead Dan Burke improvising with the violinist Theresa Marin Nakra, as the melancholic sweeps across the strings gets mangled through Burke's electronic synthesis and shortwave static. It ends up sounding like a much looser version of the Machinefabriek / Jasper TX filmic soundscape sound that we love so much. Elsewhere, Burke revisits a track from one of the early IOS cassettes, stretching out the pastoral if plastic ambience of his synthetic strings into a terrifying blur of unsettled distortion and post-Fennesz pixelated drone. Illusion Of Safety offers similar early examples of digital synthesis, including a soundtrack for an art installation of thickly collaged car horns, looking back to the maddening sound design of traffic jams from Jean-Luc Goddard's "Weekend." Limited to 200 copies of which we've got the final few copies.
Arguably the finest Illusion Of Safety record ever made, Probe was the 1992 recording composed by Dan Burke and Jim O'Rourke. The former began Illusion Of Safety a decade earlier with a revolving door personnel policy involving a handful of Chicago malcontents. O'Rourke began working with Burke's project around 1989 or so, when he was still a teenager and studying composition in college. Where many of the Illusion Of Safety albums are full-frontal assaults on the psyche of the listener (especially the groundbreaking album Historical with its raw use of narration from torture documentaries), Probe is a far more subtle and thus effective album marked by the extended use of disturbed silences, predating such sound design techniques that David Lynch mastered in Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. This use of space is definitely coming from the O'Rourke side of the equation (which according to Burke was 50/50 on Probe), as O'Rourke's early solo album Scend was released at about the same time as Probe with profound similarities. Throughout the subsonic frequencies and unsettled spooky drones, there are numerous punctures of analogue sourced micro-bleeping, errata from shortwave, scrabbling of tactile objects, field recordings of traffic jams, children at play, carnival rides, etc. and jittery digitally sculpted loops. As all of these elements slowly unfurl over several lengthy chapters, Probe truly synthesizes the aesthetics of both Burke and O'Rourke into a cohesive body of work, with Burke's research into the dark and transgressive balanced with O'Rourke's studies into the musique concrete of Luc Ferrari and Michel Chion.
Staalplaat first released Probe in a wooden slipcase in an edition of 500 copies. Those quickly went out of print; but fortunately, Perdition Plastics has just reissued this brilliant album, albeit in more conventional packaging...
Just a few weeks ago, we openly wondered where Illusion Of Safety had been for the past few years. Well, it turns out that Dan Burke (the principal director of the ensemble at the moment) has entered a renewed period of activity now that IoS is 25 years old. This milestone has not softened the psychologically dark currents of one of America's finest producers of post-industrial abstraction and silence-plus-noise sound construction. Sedation & Quell is the first of many releases slated for 2008, being a vinyl-only release pressed on translucent gold vinyl.
Sedation bristles with low end frequencies capable of delivering catatonic states. Vinyl crackling and warm swathes of radio hiss billow out of the deep deep deep dronings, and huge oceanic swells of growling frequencies offer a lethargic rhythm to this dark ambient opus. On Quell, a brusque crunch of electronic malfunction is followed by a steady hypnosis of rumbling drones which in turn are engulfed by a wash of hiss and white noise. While it's not the aggressiveness of Prurient or Merzbow that Illusion Of Safety is going for, there is a malevolent strain to this production, as if Machinefabriek were to gingerly steer towards power electronics ever so slightly. Very well done!
Somewhere, an old T-shirt from Illusion Of Safety exists (the last we saw was affixed to Sigtryggur from Stillupsteypa some 10 years ago) with a deadpan/ironic catch-phrase "Illusion Of Safety gives you that soaring feeling" next to an image of a man tumbling headfirst out of a skyscraper window. Such a calculated juxtaposition of word and image was emblematic of the '80s art world (e.g. Barbara Kruger), often speaking to the underbelly of callousness, cruelty, violence and general amorality within consumerist society. Outside of this bold piece of iconography, Illusion Of Safety has operated within a more liminal state of mysteriousness through signifier and meaning. Even in their most placid albums of soft-focus ambience, the specter of some unknowable threat lurks in the background. More common in the Illusion Of Safety catalogue is an iron-fisted grasp of that sense of foreboding and dread through psychologically tense sound design. Over three decades in existence, this Chicago based project has been whittled down to its core member Dan Burke - with a few comrades-in-arms joining him occasionally - and is probably the longest running American industrial project, having produced a very impressive body of work. The 2014 album Surrender fits comfortably next to some of the masterpieces of the IOS back catalogue (e.g. Cancer, In Session, Historical, etc.) through the trademarked juxtaposition of noxious frequencies snaking in and out of harmonic phase patterns only to snap out of existence with a razor-cut edit into an electrical burst of tesla coil noise (for example). Disjointed rhythms, mediated collages, decontextualized field recordings, and psychoacoustic phrases map this album with incredible control and precision. Illusion Of Safety proves once again that they are one of the greats of industrial culture. Grab this album before it disappears, the pro-duplicated cd-r is limited to just 100 copies. Same for the cassette.
Here's a perfect fit for the Drone Records imprint Subtantian Innominata. Illusion Of Safety is the long-running post-industrial project revolving around Chicago's Dan Burke. Over the past 30 years, he and his band of malcontents have created an amazing, if under-appreciated catalogue of psychologically grim soundtracks, brutal collages, and sublime dronemuzik, with most of the recordings operating on divergent aesthetic paths. On Sweet Dreams, Illusion Of Safety pushes towards an organic melancholy through some downright beautiful passages for guitar and synth explorations that recalls the Connie Plank haze cast upon Harmonia and Cluster back in the day. Yet, Burke detours from the kosmische ethos by snapping concise samples of earthen crunch along Robert Hampson-esque grids with loosened strumming dissolving the title track into a plaintive call and response of the technological and the roughhewn. "Unresolved" treats the guitar with more of a Tim Hecker sensibility for a digitally savvy blissout, followed up on the flipside with the hypnotic and lovely "Always Somewhere Else" whose motorik underbelly gradually levitates through an oscillating sequence of synths, with brightly toned guitar plucks gradually revolving into focus next to celestial choral synths. Quite a surprise from Illusion Of Safety, but one we're delighted to encounter.
2008 marks the 25th year for Illusion Of Safety. Once an ensemble of misanthropic electron engineers, Illusion Of Safety has effectively reduced itself down to a single member in Dan Burke who has arrived at the silver anniversary with some of his best work produced throughout the sprawling Illusion Of Safety catalogue. There was the Quell & Sedition 10", the In Session cd, and now this small edition cd-r, all of which are exemplary versions of the Illusion Of Safety signature sound for psychologically challenging compositions. The Need To Now is more of a blackened cosmic headspace music, with all of the psychedelic flourishes that burst out of Klaus Schulze or Expo '70 turned towards something much much darker and much more brooding. There is oblivion in front of you when you are floating alone in outer space, and Burke presents that sublime fiction replete with wonder and horror. For all of the bleak subtext of the album, Burke keeps things very subtle preferring to focus on the minimalist dronesmear ruptured with occasional detours. The shadow and vacuum of Illusion Of Safety's aerosolized drone always has something ominous just outside of earshot, something lurking the corners of those corroded metal tones and already eerie passages of sci-fi incidental music slowed way the hell down. Illusion Of Safety breaks up the long-form drones with tense glitch workouts that could be an extract from a CoH production, with all sorts of misfired squiggles, poorly grounded bursts of electricity, and erratic charged samples; but unsettled ambience overcomes each of these crescendo like a creeping suffocating fog of toxic gas. It's an austere and powerful record, in spite of the many subtle twists and turns. Fucking incredible is what The Need To Now is. Limited to a mere 150 copies.
Illusion Of Safety's Time Remaining was released back in 2003 by the small British imprint Ossonossos. Some five years later, we finally managed to get a hold of some copies; and it remains to be seen, if we'll be able to get more. Now that the scarcity issue has been broached, we must now regale you with the virtues and vices of this record. Illusion Of Safety is the post-industrial project centered around Dan Burke, who has often recruited some fellow Chicagoan misanthropes and avant-garde technophiles to propagate his soundscapes which parallel those of the Hafler Trio, John Duncan, Stilluppsteypa, and Lustmord. There could also be a claim for IOS as a precedent to the fuzzbound digismear of artists like Machinefabriek and Tim Hecker, albeit with Illusion Of Safety producing a much darker, more malevolent body of work.
Time Remaining operates something like a horror soundtrack with a bristling introduction of electo-shock noise, mechanical chugs, and Tesla coil bursts, all tightly wound into a precise collage of bloodcurdling intensity. Illusion Of Safety reprises this electric volatility at the conclusion of the album, that may or may not be an homage to their 1993 album Historical, which essentially used the same strategy. In between these two brackets of pierced sound, Illusion Of Safety fabricates equally dark, but far more subtle atmospheres of shadowy hiss, blurry drone, and fluttered recordings of urban decay. Here is actually where Burke's strength really lies, and if David Lynch weren't already so good at sound design, he would want to look to Dan Burke to score his films.
It's a bit unfortunate that we've not stocked more work by Illusion Of Safety, but it's better late than never to get into this exceptional album.
Another limited edition split single from Die Stadt, this time featuring Chicago's stalwart post-Industrial ensemble Illusion Of Safety and Germany's dronecore specialist Thomas Koner. Illusion Of Safety takes a confrontationist approach by opening their condensed program with a jarring clatter of fragmented film-noir orchestrations that are roughly broken into a nervous drone. Koner's approach is far more subtle, gently pushing forward a sublime drone and allowing it to fade into silence. Limited to 400 copies.
This Paris synth / cold / new wave duo are the first contemporary release on the Medical reissue label, and they're a perfect fit, sounding like, if we didn't know better, and actual reissue of some Euro-wave obscurity from the nineties. Sure the sound is a bit more modern, more synth-gaze / darkwave than old school new wave, less low fidelity too, but for the most part, I.S. have THAT sound nailed. Buzzing synths, squelchy basslines, sequenced rhythms, swirling atmospheres, the vibe cold and clinical, with vocalist Christina delivering her best sexy ice queen croon, besides sounding like an actual band from back in the day, they also sound like they'd be right at home on Italians Do It Better. Fans of that labels Euro-disco synthwave and outfits like Desire, Chromatics and Glass Candy will be in retro-synth gloom-wave heaven. Many of the tracks are dark and dour, shadowy and melancholic, but a bunch fall closer to classic EDM, channeling Cabaret Voltaire and Chris And Cosey, and obviously anyone into the current crop of modern retro synthwave outfits will definitely dig! Usually when reissue labels dabble in contemporary music, the results are disappointing, but Medical obviously know what they're doing, and we can't imagine anyone who's dug ANY of the Medical reissues, wouldn't also dig Illustration Sonore!
Like all of Medical's reissues, Illustration Sonore's Undisciplined Strips Of Emotion is fantastically packaged, pressed on heavy clear vinyl, housed in a faux distressed full color jacket, with a full color insert / lyric sheet. And yeah, also VERY limited...
As if all of the projects that Emeralds' synth wrangler John Elliott weren't enough, he's adopted a pseudonym to record under the Imaginary Softwoods banner. The name's Blue O'Randa here, although there's little doubt as the authorship of the sounds. With the exception of the bittersweet attitude of "Rainbow Obsidain Key" and its faux-harpsichord melodies, The Path Of Spectrolite fully embraces the New Age path that Elliott, ummm, O'Randa has been teasing us with through all of his recordings. With all of the aquatic bubbling, bright-eyed synth pads, cosmic shot dream-drone, and harmonic tonal shimmer, Imaginary Softwoods bare more than passing resemblance to the likes of Iasos. Limited to just about 500 copies.
All right. Yet another great homage to the transcendent, cosmological sounds of mid-'70s progressive electronics by way of John Elliott, better known as one of the synth dudes in Emeralds. The number of Elliott's solo / side projects is pretty staggering, with Imaginary Softwoods being the eighth that we're aware of, outside of Emeralds. Given the vast back catalogue from the Elliott / Emeralds axis, it shouldn't come as surprise that this 2lp set has gone through several permutations as well. First on cassette (three of 'em!). Then on vinyl. A cd-r came and went. Now, this remastered set appears once again on vinyl. There is a reason for all of the various editions of this album: it's a damn good record!
The first side opens with a cold void atmosphere of filter sweep tones and metallic sawtooth vibrato, reminiscent of Elliott's recordings as Outer Space with more of slant toward the languorous, flanging drones that come by way of Maeror Tri or Cranioclast, minus the post-industrial framework. Elliott settles into a series of tone cluster of rounded synth notes whose cycling phrases have an elegant restraint and somber mood, as if Morton Feldman were to score a isolationist sci-fi soundtrack. Side two offers more of the liquid abstraction that became an Emeralds' signature on What Happened, sprawling through gentle oscillation and bittersweet half-melodies. A church-organ like set of rainy-day impressionism settles onto the third side, before Elliott reprises the cold flanging isolationism and Feldman-like tone clusters noted on the first side. The album drifts into a minor-key oblivion that descends over the course of the three final tracks on the fourth side of the album, tumbling into maudlin suspended tones and drones. So so nice!
The strangely named duo Imbogodom, made up of UK based Alexander Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Ginnungagap) and New Zealander Daniel Beban, once again return to the BBC studios, sneaking in after everyone has gone home, where they again proceeded to work some audio alchemy on the old equipment, using not much more than a mixing desk and tape machines, as well as some field recordings and found sounds to create their own sort of BBC Radiophonic Workshop style analog tape musique concrete. And like their last record, The Metallic Year, it's pretty fantastic. A dizzying assemblage of sounds and textures, atmospheric, ambient, rhythmic, moody and haunting, mysterious and otherworldly, clouds of static whirl around the whir of machinery, glistening tinkling chimes are blurred into smears of hazy shimmer, melodies and voices are chopped and looped and layered into weirdly majestic alien prog folk, deep tones and slowed down voices are transformed into foghorn like gurgles and deep monstrous rumbles, wild drums are wedded to woozy psychedelic guitars, fuzzy folk is wreathed in black clouds of whir and thrum, and doused in strange effects, shortwave buzz gives way to creepy music box melodies, keening high end tones melt down into murky muddy creep, pocked with sci-fi glitchery, and disembodied voices, stately pianos are smeared into something a bit hazy and warbly, before blossoming into a strange fuzzy psychedelic ballad.
It's a pretty fantastically trippy songsuite, one that masterfully avoids the pitfalls of much experimental music, where the idea and the execution, the story behind the sounds and the joy of creating far surpass the joy of actually listening. But here, it's just the opposite, it's so easy to be immediately transported, the sounds so evocative, so warm and layered and full of small discoveries that surface with each repeated listen, they become essentially a series of miniature soundtracks, music to accompany whatever wild visions the listener can conjure up. So good!
Another in our ongoing campaign to get caught up on reviewing cd-r's that somehow slipped through the cracks, and have ended up no getting reviewed until now! And as usual, these are WAY out of print, the equivalent of a warehouse find, we have about 10 copies of this one, never to have more.
A while back. Robert Horton was releasing a record a week it seemed like, threatening to out Aidan Baker, Aidan Baker himself. This disc is from back then, and was one of the discs we never managed to get through, being so busy reviewing all of the others. Anyway, it's a pretty great slab of abstract folky strum and haunting jazzy horns. The Imperfect Masters finds Horton teaming up with Dan Plonsey, and the two, create some sort of alien jazz folk. Horton's guitar is brittle and high end, lots of slippery slide and squalls of buzz and scrape, Plonsey's horn is wild and unhinged, hooting and skronking over the top. It threatens to be too much, when they shift gears and lock into a killer muted forest groove, all plucked strings, and pulsing bass, still slightly unhinged, but more haunting and hypnotic.
The rest of the disc is tripped out and droney, the horns taking a backseat to buzzing guitars and sporadic percussion. The disc finishes with a 22 minute epic, a slow build, guitars and horns, some bass and other noisemakers, slowly building layer upon layer, to a frenzied free jazz climax, then winding down for the tracks final 5 minutes or so, locking into a droning almost bagpipe like dirge jam. Cool stuff.
And again, this is almost 2 years old, so once the 8 or so copies we have are gone, we will not be able to get more.
We found a handful of titles, maybe only 5 or 6 of each, from Aussie label Diagnosis� Don't! We've had these for ages, and odds are these are long gone as they were pretty limited to begin with, but for a few of you, here's your chance to grab one (or all) of these super limited 3" cd-r's.
The Impromptulons are an improvising (get it?) free noise collective from Brisbane, who use a confusional mix of instruments to create their sound, from found objects to actual percussion, lots of feedback, very rhythmic and ritualistic, one single extended jam, equal parts Avarus and the Dead C, very tribal, with plenty of click and glitch, rumble and thump, all wrapped in a swirling haze of tape hiss and distant bowed strings, not really noisy so much as much as hypnotic. Strings are plucked, drones shimmer, percussion clanks and clunks, and somehow the result is a gorgeous piece of rhythmic dronemusic.
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. And again, we only have a VERY FEW of these....
The entity that released the phenomenal and weighty 10-cd wooden box set known as "Improvised Music From Japan" (box, label, website) is now also a magazine. Printed in both English and Japanese, this squarebound, digest-sized debut issue runs to about 132 pages (with the Japanese text occupying the second half, or first if you read it back-to-front Japanese style). And, it comes with a cd compilation bound inside the front (or back) cover. Reviews, interviews and essays by and about the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, Ami Yoshida, Uchihashi Kzuhisa, Phew, Aki Onda, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Utah Kawasaki, and many others make for fasinating reading if you're the sort of avant-garde music fan at all curious about the underground Japanese improvising scene. There's a review of, and translated excerpts from, a book called "The History Of Japanese Free Jazz" which us English-only types will find to be extremely tantalizing. Perhaps a full English translation of the book could be future project for the industrious Improvised Music From Japan folks? Info about such artists as Masayuki Takanyangi, the Taj Mahal Travellers, and Kaoru Abe is certainly hard to come by in the West, so it would be nice...
Meanwhile, on the compact disc, there's works by Toshimaru Nakamura, Haco, Yoshio Machida, Masahiko Okura and others. Creaking door ambience, silence, acoustic guitars, shortwave static crackle, field recordings, laptop computers, trombone drone... it's a really nice disc, proof of why this scene deserves such a journal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oh Lordy, it's here. Weren't you just asking us about when the next issue of Improvised Music From Japan was going to arrive? All 200 pages (half in English, half in Japanese) of it, plus two compliation cds. Do any of these names interest or excite you: Kazue Sawai, Aki Onda, Kazuo Imai, Tetuzi Akiyama, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Sachiko M, Taku Sugimoto, Haco? Then this is for you, and you probably *were* asking us about it... All those folks and more appear in these pages, along with a bunch of tantalizing reviews. And there's a special section from Otomo Yoshihide all about making connections with the Korean free jazz scene, in which he interviews saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan. So, if Japanese free jazz / 'onkyo' / improv electronics etc. is your thing, here you go, plenty of good readin'. Not to mention listenin', as the two discs are crammed with all sorts of interesting and diverse performances from many of the artists mentioned above. We were particularily chuffed to check out the "improvised extreme optical core unit" Optrum who provide five noisy tracks on disc two.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Second issue (sort of, they call it "Extra") of this print and audio journal devoted to the underground Japanese electro-acoustic improvisation scene. Definitely THE place to go to get enlightened about what's happening on that front. In both English and Japanese, this thick 128 page magazine features interviews with Ami Yoshida, Shoji Hano, and numerous others we're less familiar with, quite a few of 'em from a young generation of musicians here dubbed "Improv's New Waves". There's also a ton of reviews of intriguing cd releases that you'll probably only find out about here (and never see in a shop outside of Japan), and of course there's the magazine's audio portion: this time around, two discs full of cuts by artists from that "New Waves" scene, everything from jazz trumpet to turntables to death metal drums n' laptop. There's couple bonus cuts as well, including one from, um, old wave improvisor Shoji Hano.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Some of the most imaginative and accessible experimental sounds around at the momement" says The Wire magazine of this solo project from American visual artist Steve Roden, which involves a plethora of acoustic and electronic instruments and sound sources, mixed together in an interesting ambient brew.
Nope, this is not the old 4AD band featuring a member that later went onto the Wolfgang Press. Rather, this In Camera is a collaborative project between Christoph Heemann and Timo van Luijk (Noise Maker's Fifes, Af Ursin), marking the first recordings that Heemann has made since the dissolution of Mirror. Not surprising, In Camera exhibits plenty of similarities to Mirror and a couple of interesting detours. These recordings are available only on vinyl, like the bulk of the Mirror catalogue; and Heemann and van Lujik conjure a beautifully dark atmosphere, full of murk and mystery. However, the two also push to the foreground a constant stream of sonic details which Mirror might have blurred into a miasma of abstraction. The use of the piano is the most obvious element, with a subdued monotony tickled from the keys broken by occasional heavy fists on the lower registers. Similarly, In Camera also crackle a range of elemental objects, which curiously enough give the impression of sounding like Andrew Chalk's old project Ora. Regardless, this marks an exceptional recording and hopefully the beginning of another fruitful collaborative project for Christoph Heemann.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With the hallucinatory translucent packaging (that is even more so with the bright red 20' to 2000 style disc enclosed) and the engraved cases, Kozo Inada has certainly done his job making his debut cd look really kick-ass. Musically, this follows the increasingly commonplace tropes of the digital glitch aesthetic with multiple tracks of phasing pure tone bleeps and artificial chirps. See also Noto or Ryoji Ikeda.
Another super limited cd-r from the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label, this time, a solo record from frequent YS collaborator Eva, who on her own can weave delicate drones with the best of em! Two lengthy tracks, thirty minutes of slow shifting, lazily drifting otherworldy shimmer, all constructed from Eva's voice run through effects and wrapped in gossamer layers of reverb and delay. Very reminiscent of the recent Lichens record on Kranky, where 90 Day Men's Rob Lowe created a whole record using mostly vocals, but Inca Ore is much more ghostly and feminine and ethereal. Comes in a nice hand painted sleeve. As with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these. Once they are gone they are gone for good.
A new record (or sort of new, as the A side was originally on a super limited out of print cd-r released on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label) from Inca Ore, aka Eva, a frequent collaborator with the Yellow Swans, and it's another gorgeously murky swirl of affected vocals, as vocals are the main sound source here, but not regular old singing, no, Eva takes her haunting sing song vocals and drenches them in reverb and echo and delay, letting them pile up and swirl aimlessly, a rich thick soundscape of melody atop melody, vocals moaning and keening, all smeared into a super primitive, yet somehow super lush expanse of creepy psychedelic dreaminess, drifting and shifting and nearly ambient at points, but just as often buried beneath a fuzzy layer of downtuned guitar grit, a thick morass of ghostly sounds and sludgy atmosphere. Like hearing some lost transmission from the other side, broadcast from another plane, through your crappy beat up old radio, wraithlike music, seeping like smoke through that tiny speaker, the original transmission muddied and hard to recognize, wrapped in fuzzy indistinctness and ectoplasmic detritus. Real nice. And limited to 450 copies!
We weren't too taken with the most recent Inca Ore + Lemon Bear team up, it's too bad that one was the one released on 5RC and THIS one is a super limited cd-r instead of the other way around. The 5RC record was a bit of a cacophonous mess, lots of clang and clatter. It ended up sounding sort of bratty and obnoxious. But we're huge fans of Inca Ore, her two records before that one blew us away, and still get listened to all the time. SO we were ready to blame the mysteriously monickered Lemon Bear, but here we are with another Inca Ore n' Lemon Bear team up and it's gorgeous. A drifting spacious dreamworld of disembodied vocals, shimmering melodies, minimal percussion, all wrapped in clouds of spacey FX, fluttering flutes, warped and mangled strings, buzzing and creaking, voices drifting in and out, detuned guitars plucking out warbly melodies, the whole thing a very blissed out spaced out drift through a glistening diamond eyed dimension. Inca Ore's dreamy half hour perfectly segues into three new songs from AQ faves Starving Weirdos, who weave a haunting sonic travelogue through some ancient wilderness, a soundscape of distant insectoid buzz, whirring tectonic rumbles, glistening shimmering atmospheres, definitely their most eevocative recording yet. You can almost see the mountains in the distance, feel the warm breeze, feel the rocks and grass between your toes, hear the sounds of various animals and insects, almost like the soundtrack to a journey through the forest primeval. So murky and mysterious!
Packaged in hand painted sleeves, with printed inserts, and obviously, SUPER LIMITED!! This was a tour only release, we got a bunch direct from the bands but we're not sure how many are left or if we can even get more once we run out...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited lp sampling the current state of Portland underground sounds, with a couple well known outfits, and a couple brand new ones (at least to us), all former members of a long lost Portland band called Alarmist.
Up first is Inca Ore, who most folks are probably familiar with, and her tracks here are lovely as always, dark and contemplative, lo-fi bedroom folk, deep bell-like tones and whispered vocals, the whole thing super hushed with weird rubbery bass and of course tone of reverb and delay. The strange thing, is that in between these super quiet songs, are super raucous crowd noise, people shouting and howling and cheering, it's weirdly jarring.
Up next is Argumentix, and for most folks it will definitely be an acquired taste. Beginning with some strange a capella almost off key vocalizing over a backdrop of murky crumbling distant drones, which quickly gives way to some super lo-fi hip hop (!), lots of bleeps and bloops and strange, sort of goofy rapping. A little bit Magnetic Fields actually. The last few tracks are chunks of abstract noise, weird ambience, clicks and buzz drone, and another bunch of goofy crooning vocals. Argumentix might take a few more exposures to win us over completely.
The flip side begins with Ghost To Falco, who we had heard OF, but never heard. Beginning with some random banter, and then a poem, we weren't sure what to expect, but then the band slips into some dark mopey slowcore, a bit reminiscent of The For Carnation, spidery guitars sad mumbled vocals, muted percussion, shuffling drums, dark and moody and quite nice, before slipping into a more traditional sounding, but no less dark sort of indie folk.
Finally, long time aQ fave Tunnels returns, but instead of deep long drones, or abstract freaked out psychfolk, he offers up something else entirely, starting things off with a wild squall of blown out psychguitar, but then adds some seriously tweaked, strangled mewly vocals. Hot on the heels of that comes some skittery new wave moaned vocals, gloomy synths, robotic drum machine, before the sound shifts again and becomes a sort of unhinged cabaret super dramatic deep vocals, lots of percussive crunch, all very over the top, yet still gloomy and goth and dark.
Weird record. And all over the place even for a 4 way split. Almost plays like a recording of some strange stage production, with bands maybe trying stuff they might not normally, or more likely channeling the spirit of their old outfit Alarmist, who we have not heard, all a bit campy and very over the top in places, but balanced by the darker more somber bits.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in nice thick silk screened sleeves. Includes photocopied inserts with liner notes and track info.
We have very very very few of these so we won't go into too much detail. You probably already know just from the two artists if you need this or not. New work from two of the few women kicking ass in the mostly male 'noise rock' scene. Both huge AQ faves, both who utilize voice and effects, in addition to the usual string-ed instruments to weave dreamlike soundscapes and delicate cinematic ambience.
Both are in full effect here, each outfits offering up gauzy beauty and mysterious haunting murk, distant shimmery drones and abstract lo-fi song fragments. Gorgeous as always.
Printed insert in a gold paint splattered tape case. And as mentioned above, CRAZY limited and gone before you know it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Alchemy Records digs into their vaults yet again to re-issue on cd a 1989 Alchemy LP by the notorious Japanese noise act Incapacitants. This makes for Incapacitants' eighth cd release on Alchemy! Wow, what a legacy of high-end skree, low-end rumble,
Japanese noise otaku, here's a limited-to-300 vinyl-only artifact you might be interested in... Collaborating with mysterious British noisican Abdul Squeerter's (In Spite Of Flaming Creatures) project, Allan's favorite ear-flaying Japanese noise duo the Incapacitants are in fine form here. Six tracks of dense, dynamic, electronic noise fuckery. If you need to figure out if you're part of "Vitamin Buckfact"'s target audience, look around your room. Is that a stack of vintage Bananafish magazines in the corner? Some precious Chocolate Monk cassettes in that box over there? Alchemy cds on top of the stereo? Well then this is for you if you act quick! It's basically a Bananfish 'zine love-in (indeed, until now, the only wide-spread documentation of Mr. Squeerter's creativity, or mere existence, was some writing he did for Bananafish).
While we have yet to review any Indian Jewelry records on the aQ list, most of us here are pretty big fans. Their Invasive Exotics record was an awesome chunk of tripped out droniness, that probably would have been a really good fit on the aQ list. We'll have to remedy that soon. But before they were Indian Jewelry, they were called NTX + Electric, and had a pretty dramatically different sound.
On We Are The Wild Beast, the soon to be Indian Jewelry sounded less like some wacked Texas free psych dronewave outfit, and more like some NYC no-wave skronk combo, complete with squawking saxophones, thick gristly synth, haunting new wave grooves, lots of electronic bleepery, but also some more modern sounds, some of the melodies sound like they could have been plucked from Interpol songs, there's definitely some garage-y stomp, some shoegazey droneouts, the core sound though is the simple clattery percussion, the huge thick slabs of buzzing synth, and the saxophone, which spends much of its time in the background, unfurling hypnotic snakecharmer grooves.
Buried amidst all this skronk and skree and buzz re some fantastic pop songs, and some killer hooks, but they're usually obscured by clouds of FX, or wrapped around spiky angular riffing. The opener is a killer, a modern sounding dancefloor killer, with it's sax refrain and the blown out synth buzz, a total new wave groove that would have the girljean set frugging madly. But then there's songs like "Looking At You", a dreamy krautpop jam, with that same sax refrain from the first song resurfacing, all under thick sheets of crumbling psych guitar. The nearly 14 minute "S-O-S-O-S" begins like some sort of Spacemen 3 bliss out, but soon transforms into some off kilter Unrest style jam, insistent guitar jangle, Beatles-y croon, and simple lo-fi pop hooks, all wrapped up in loads of distortion, and more amp frying FX.
It's really not that hard to hear a lot of later Indian Jewelry in the sound of NTX+Electric, but they have more of an old school electro / no-wave thing going on, which means fans of folks like Glass Candy and the like might also dig. Cool, weird, awesome stuff.
