As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up.
A selection of rare and unreleased tracks from these infamous Swedes. Recorded in the mid to late eighties, these tracks mix electronic experimentation with industrial pummel, abstract noise, sound collage, processed vocals, all tangled up into drummachined blasts of grinding squealing, squeaking, pounding fuzz drenched, super distorted freak out. Think a more newwaved Throbbing Gristle. Dance music for the one legged. A musical metal helmet strapped on and set to stun, ears bleeding and toes tapping. Bogens Massage Institut is a gloriously dense assemblage of thick and corrosive, but sort of surprisingly playful, alien sounds and noises.
Includes an insert with extensive liner notes and discography.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
EnemyMine is one guy from LOW and one guy from godheadSilo doing pretty much what you'd expect.
Paul Gonzenbach is the gent responsible for the guitar, vocals and piano in Bay Area band Jim Yoshii Pile Up. They've been on an indefinite hiatus for a while, so a couple of years ago he busted out on his own solo mission under the moniker Enforcer with this album called Baby Panda! However, there's another band with that same name who recently released a cd too - reviewed here last list, they're a Maideny metal band - hence, he's now making music as Baby Panda. Anyhoo, here's his solo debut album! It's a moody, slow paced indie rock beauty... in turn, it's a bit reminiscent of Seam, Built To Spill, Death Cab For Cutie, and yes, JYP. Earnest, sensitive, well crafted with subtle dynamics. Hopefully we'll get his more recent releases soon!
This Portland, Oregon trio combine retro garage surf muscle with British invasion-era pop hooks for a wickedly catchy and well-crafted platter of tunes.Happy Horror is full of whip-smart driving grooves and almost avoids obvious pastiche ("X-ray Glasses" may be the kitschiest exception) while still playing serious homage to bands like The Zombies, The Hollies, and The Buckinghams, with just enough of a hint of The Cramps's devilish edge to keep us coming back for more.
Jeremy Enigk has made some pretty remarkable records over the years, with his band Sunny Day Real Estate he pretty much created the EMO blueprint, one that would be copied by so many bands over the years, none of which could ever hope to evvoke the true emotion and melodicism of Enigk's songs. One of his best, and sadly most overlooked records was his first solo album, Return Of The Frog Queen, which found him once again drawing up blueprints, this time for orchestral and shimmering, immaculate songcraft realized into a sound that would later make folks like Arcade Fire, Rufus Wainwright, and The Decemberists household names. We've always had a HUGE soft spot for Enigk's voice and songs, but we have to admit his last few outings have left us a bit underwhelmed. Luckily, OK Bear finds him sounding better than ever. Not quite as precious or ambitious as that first breathtaking solo outing and not as full throttle and intense as Sunny Day Real Estate at their prime (though a few of these tracks definitely go there!), but for sure finding a really nice happy medium between those two worlds.
Many moons ago Jeremy Enigk was the singer for the beloved epic emo band Sunny Day Real Estate.
Man, that band had some great songs... nailed you right in the heart. Enigk's songwriting flame still burns brightly, but these days it comes in the form akin to a lone candle or hearth. His songs are filled with a lush earthiness, warming the traditional rock instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums with piano, strings and such. The beautiful setting embraces his unrelentingly desolate, emotionally charged lyrics. Pretty darn great!
A side note: You know when you hear someone's voice and it reminds you of someone else, but you just can't quite put your finger on it? Drives you crazy, and then hours or days later it dawns on you. That was the case with this album. Apologies to Mr. Enigk if he doesn't find this to be a flattering comment, but he really really sounds like Chris De Burgh. So is this The Missing Link... to the "Lady In Red"? Hmmmm.
Now on Vinyl!!
The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Roedelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again 4 Men With Beards has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.
The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Rodelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again Water has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.
Perhaps the most renowned of Eno's ambient albums, Music For Airports, originally released in 1978, is a (or we should say *the*) seminal -ambient- work. The proof is over a quarter decade's worth of other artists (and some downright imitators) who've amassed an enormous collective body of work directly inspired by this one album. This is the O.G. of gorgeous shimmering atmospheric soundscapes. Truly sublime. While Eno's conceptual "hands off" compositional style is certainly one of the larger factors in his influencing other future ambient artists, the striking thing about this work that makes it so compelling is the way in which the pieces manage to impart a feeling of warmth despite the clinically mechanical way in which the pieces are played. And while the performance here is not executed by machines the impact of it carries on down, all the way to the Aphex Twin's zenith of robotic beauty, The Richard D. James album. The four pieces here (programmatically named "1/1", "2/1", "1/2" & "2/2" for their sequencing on the original LP) build one upon the next. The first is arranged entirely with electric and acoustic pianos (with some help from Robert Wyatt for this), the second a chorus of voices and the third and fourth pieces combination of those elements with additional synth help. The drifting and staggered arpeggios cascade in slow motion giving the pieces a shapeless consistency, somehow always moving forward while remaining frozen. A suitable antidote to muzak if there ever was one. If anything dates, or holds back the three latter pieces on this disc it's the now archaic synth patches. They can be charming, but I've never been able to listen to "2/2" without thinking immediately of Steve Winwood's "While You See A Chance". Needless to say, this small downside can't spoil as great an album as this.
- MPEG stream: 1/1
- MPEG stream: 2/2
While Plateaux of Mirror could be seen as the inspiration for a generation of new age musicians, On Land (released in 1982) is arguably a place card for a wellspring of darker ambient musicians forging soundtracks for non-existant films. Some, like the now obscure J. Grienke made careers out of this single album. Others, like Richard James on the Aphex Twin's excellent double cd Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, pay homage and move on. But hints of this dark collection of audio soundscapes can be heard from the likes of Biosphere, Deathprod, Andrew Chalk, Troum and even Village of Savoonga. The key elements involved are an elimination of melody and rhythm. As Eno puts it, quite well in fact, in the liner notes: "the landscape has ceased to be a backdrop for something else to happen in front of: instead everything that happens is part of the landscape. There is no longer a sharp distinction between foreground and background". A seminal work and a must have.
A new rock record from Brian Eno in 2005. After beginning with the uptempo "This", a tune surprizingly similar to the Cale duet "One Word" from the pair's 1990 album Wrong Way Up, the album is primarily filled with slow tempo songs of a pensive temperment and reminiscent of Eno's collaborations with guitar tech wiz and fellow producer Daniel Lanois. Not a bad return to rock for Mr. Eno, but there's something very Rip Van Winkle in the overall production of the album, like Brian's still hammering through the eighties and has just recently discovered Tears For Fears and Simple Minds.
We didn't review Another Green World with the other Eno reissues featured a couple weeks back 'cuz they turned out to have some weird defect, but that's been fixed now and so here you go: Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
What remains to be said about one of the all-time classic art-rock records? Here we find Brian Peter George St. John Le Baptiste De La Salle Eno (yes, that's his full name!) leaving behind the song structures of the preceding albums, and jumping straight into inventing the mood-driven, almost-snippits-but-too-composed-to-be-just-parts style of atmospheric 'songs'. A melding of his ambient sides with occasional vocals. "Sombre Reptiles", "I'll Come Running", "St. Elmo's Fire"... MAN, JUST TOO GOOD. If you've never heard this record, buy it and live with it for a few years. It'll getcha eventually... Really, just a flat-out model and inspiration for everything synthetic / experimental / art / punk / pop from Bowie's Low album to Talking Heads to I Am Spoonbender (Cup admits that IAS often uses a set of Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' cards during sessions, just like those mentioned in the liner notes to this essential release. FYI: they were a small black box containing a deck of cards imprinted with an assortment of open-to-interpretation statements... an oracle of sorts that you could refer to in times of creative blocks).
The opportunity of a lifetime film score for Brian Eno: providing a soundtrack to the most, quite literally, other-worldy film footage ever shot. Eno was approached by ex-astronaut Al Reinert in the early eighties to put his ambient touch on a project that Reinert was working on documenting the apollo missions. Reinhert had sorted through 6,000,000 feet of NASA film footage shot by astronauts on those missions, picking out what he considered to be the best clips. To this he intended to add only the voices of the astronauts themselves -- both from interviews after the missions and from their transmissions to Houston during them -- and Eno's music. Though Eno's score was released in 1983, Reinert's film -- For All Mankind -- wasn't completed until 1989. Recorded just a year after his Ambient 4: On Land, the material here is quite similar. The compositions are far less conceptual than his earlier ambient works, yet the pieces here have an intuitive, textural and emotional feel without relying on -- for the most part -- melody. All but four tracks on this album use that same Eno M.O. of blurring the idea of "foreground and background", much like his previous release On Land. The guitar and bass, when the appear, are subverted from their original roles -- melodic lead, rhythm and harmony -- and instead are used for texture and atmosphere as much as the synths and electronics. The ambient tracks on Apollo have a foreboding and sublime quality -- appropriate enough for the vast eternity of space and the dessicated & bleak terrain of the moon. The four non-ambient tracks on this disc, all nestled together towards its end, are a bit of a departure from the rest of the album. "Always Returning" is probably the weakest link on the album, with its sentimental guitar part played by Daniel Lanois. Lanois however redeems himself with his pedal steel guitar playing on "Deep Blue Day", like a Sons Of The Pioneers tune, shot full of heroin and launched into the vacuum of space.
Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
The last of Eno's 'song' records before he drifted off into wind-blown dronespace for good (or bad?). In many ways, this album could be thought of as a more pastoral and less baroque Another Green World, with plenty of experiments near the framework of rock music. It could be that this is exactly what is meant by 'experimental pop music' -- avant garde ideas reworked so as to appear as being something like 'regular music'. As usual, this release features appearances by interesting guests: Can's Jaki Liebezeit and German electronic pioneers Cluster.
The second wave of Brian Eno reissues is of his genre creating and defining ambient music albums from 1975 through 1982. The first in the series is Discreet Music and it's in the liner notes here that Eno describes the genesis for his ambient music. The story goes that while he was recouperating in a hospital after having been struck by a car he found himself inspired through another sort of accident. Eno had been brought a record of 18th century harp music to listen to but, after having struggled to put the record on in his weakened state, found the amplifier levels way too low and one channel of the recording completely missing. Thus he was forced to strain to hear nothing but the loudest of notes above the ambient din in the room. Add to this Eno's admission that he considers himself a much better conceiver of plans than executor of them and you have the foundations for Discreet Music. Eno's goal was to set up a system which would generate music with as little input from him as possible. To this end Eno created a feedback loop into which he could insert pairs of notes and let the ensuing echo box and delay line do the rest. The flipside of this coin, included on this album, is a suite in three parts entitled "Three Variations On the Canon In D Major By Johann Pachelbel". For this piece Eno took sections of the Canon and, on each of the sections, gives the players different instructions for the treatment of those parts. In each case the directives result in different but beautiful deconstructions of the all too familiar Canon.
Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
"My baby's on fiyaaaaaaa!"... so good. Eno's first solo album after leaving Roxy Music finds him in 'proto-everything' territory, pre-dating art-pop, punk and indie rock with his Dada-esque lyrics and a fresh 'non-musician' approach (those are his words, although a bit misleading -- it's not like he was a gardener before he walked into the studio!) to avant garde songs. Glammy, brooding, and exploratory. This, along with his mood-masterpiece Another Green World, comprise the essential bits of pre-ambient Eno.
Finally a new Brian Eno solo record, his first for Warp (his past two Warp releases were collaborations, mind you), and it's a record we can fully get behind without apology. His first solo record since 2005's Another Day On Earth (which was a return to rock forms), Lux is a beautiful ambient recording reminiscent of his classic period especially the records, Discreet Music and Thursday Afternoon, Lux serving as a continuum of those same ideas, namely his "Music For Thinking" project started on those records and continued on 1993's Neroli. Lux is a 76 minute composition broken into 12 movements over 4 tracks, at its core a progression of layered loops of piano and synthesizer that shift in unpredictable ways. Evolved from a work currently housed in the Great Gallery of the Palace of Venaria in Turin, Italy, if you try to listen to this with intense scrutiny, it may just come across as merely pretty and evocative, but it actually evolves in ways that are very compelling. If left to play and forgotten about, it has the ability to sink into your consciousness and subtly vibrate your peripheral surroundings with an unidentifiable charge. Eno once said that the inspiration for Discreet Music was from being in a hospital bed unable to turn up the radio in the room, so had to lie motionless listening to a barely audible murmur and was trying to recapture that strange disembodied audio-acoustic feeling. Lux works on that same level. It's a rare ambient release that we could seeing being used as a tool of meditation, as well as a score for a psychological horror film. It will play with your mind! This first edition comes with a series of prints Eno made exclusively for this release, and there's a download card with the 2lp verion.
Here's a straggler that was meant to come out with the last batch of Eno reissues, but was pulled due to a manufacturing defect (is there some rule that at least one Eno disc in each series must have a defect?). More Music For Films stands out amongst the other Eno reissues in that, as an album, it's a previously unreleased one. Let's qualify that statement: More Music For Films contains two albums, one rare and the other rarer, from the early eighties. 11 of the tracks come from Music For Films 2 which was included as a bonus LP to the Working Backwards box set that was released in 1983. The other tracks are culled from a promo-only sampler (only 500 copies printed) which had been sent to a "select group of film directors". Much of the material on More Music For Films comes from the same recording sessions as Music For Films and the album as a whole fits neatly at its side as a companion record. The songs contained herein are all instrumentals, with a variety of moods suitable for use in just about any film.
"This album is a compilation of fragments from my recorded work over the last two or three years. Some of it was made specifically for use as soundtrack material, some of it was made for other reasons but found its way into films; most of it is previously unissued in any form." So says Brian Eno in the liner notes. And people continue to milk this album for their films -- as anyone who's taken a film class in college can attest to. Well, at least fifteen or twenty years ago it was still being used to the point of excess. Extreme over use by film students and budding documentarians aside, Music For Films still holds together rather well... okay, maybe it dates itself a little here and there with the occasional synth patch, or bass line. You can hear a lot of the ideas for what went into Another Green World and Before And After Science on here, which makes one wonder how much of this may have been recorded during those sessions and culled from the album. In fact the track "M386" here is a dead ringer for a half-speed dub mix of Eno's "No One Receiving" off of the latter. While not immediately rock in nature -- the songs lack any verse/chorus/verse structure and seem to be devoid of any beginning, middle or end -- they aren't all as flattened out to be merely texture as his other ambient works. The cast of heavy hitter musicians here include many from Another Green World, such as Phil Collins, Fred Frith, Dave Mattacks, John Cale and Robert Fripp.
Unlike most of the recent reissues of classic albums, Brian Eno's aren't graced / padded with extra bells'n'whistles (outtakes, demo versions and the like) nor are there swollen booklets of liner notes, photos, glowing praise, etc. No, you get the albums as they were originally released -- albeit remastered and packaged in simple digipaks with plain clear plastic slipcovers -- and frankly, with albums as timeless and remarkable as these, that's enough! Each is an inspired and inspiring work, remaining vital and compelling even thirty years later. Needless to say, each is fully deserving of an honored place in any record collection.
One of Eno's best songs kicks off TTM(BS), the ubiquitous and lovely "Burning Airlines Gives You So Much More", with a gorgeous post-Beatles melody and snaky harmonized guitar (an Eno trademark, often played by Robert Fripp on these releases). From there on out, TTM(BS) expands upon -- but doesn't often better -- the ideas that began with Here Come The Warm Jets. Slightly more introspective. It's also less sneering. Of course, Bauhaus resonated with Eno's idea of absurdist / glam / experimental pop, later covering this album's sixth song "Third Uncle". Really, this often sounds like Chairs Missing era Wire in spots, and we all know that's a good thing!
In a lecture given by Brian Eno for the Long Now Foundation last year he explained the genesis of his ideas on ambient music, which was in itself inspired by the music of Terry Riley, Fela Kuti and the Velvet Underground -- music that he felt "flattened" the "hierarchical structure" of its components. He went on to say that "In my own work this manifested in an emphasis on making what would have been called the background more interesting, and what would have been called the foreground, less and less central, thus sinking foreground elements into the background." The results of these musings culminated in, amongst others, the now highly regarded Discreet Music and Music For Airports. Discreet Music was composed of individual elements, each of differing lengths, such that the sonic soundscape would sound similar from moment to moment, but never exactly the same either. Thursday Afternoon takes a similar road map to Discreet Music, but is executed on a much larger scale. Originally recorded for a VHS tape released by Sony Japan of 7 "video-paintings" of Christine Alicino. The advent of the compact disc allowed Eno to greatly increase the length of time under which his compositions could unfold, which is exactly what Eno was able to accomplish with the audio only release of Thursday Afternoon. Thursday Afternoon is like a macro focused version of Discreet Music with every element further stretched, every minutia of hierarchy further flattened and every element of the medium -- compact disc -- exploited. Not only is the scale of the work greater, but utilizing the dynamic range of the CD Eno is able to make greater use of quieter passages with sound that previously would have been lost below the area of surface noise -- towards the end of the pieces as the individual elements drift away, you can hear the faint sounds of birds outside of Eno's studio. The increased time available on a CD, as opposed to the LP, makes for a better execution of his idea of ambient music. No more flipping the vinyl every twenty minutes, just program your CD player to repeat. Like Music For Airports, Thursday Afternoon's most distinctive element is that of a Rhodes -- or similar electric piano -- keyboard playing languid broken arpeggios, underneath which is a glistening mirage of ever shifting drones. The combination of these ever fluxuating elements creates the auditory illusion of movement and stasis.
Now on deluxe thick double vinyl with bonus tracks!!!
Mixing elements of world, funk, dub, and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded -their- take on this fusion years before it became chic and of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, and were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so OF it's time as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records that you could listen to over and over, and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective, Excepter and even Glissandro 70, whose record we review elsewhere on this list. This reissue adds a handful of bonus tracks not on the original version and unlike most extras these are in fact all essential.
Fully remastered on 180 gram vinyl with 7 previously unreleased tracks as well as selections from the multi-tracks (drum track, vocal track and ambient track) of "Help Me Somebody" and "A Secret Life" !!!!
As true a return to classic form as could be expected by this pioneer of ambient music, the one and only Brian Eno. Eno's later records are always met with a bit of trepidation as he seems more often to collaborate or explore musical realms that are perhaps more interesting to him than his listeners. But we were excited and curious to learn that Warp would be releasing this new record, and the label's pretty strict quality control ensures that it doesn't disappoint, but it's not altogether revelatory either, as much of a nice listen it truly is.
We've heard Small Craft on A Milk Sea as being billed as a series of filmless soundtracks, but we've also learned that the albums genesis was from the rejected recordings for the film, The Lovely Bones. The cinematic quality of the tracks especially the opener, "Emerald and Lime" is highly evident and harkens back to classic Eno records, Music for Films or Thursday Afternoon, with their billowly atmosphere and far-away piano tones. Later tracks evolve with more urgent dynamics as distorted guitars, percussion and processed electronics up the rhythms and textures significantly from the earlier tracks, and remind us of Eno's fourth world strategies heard on Another Green World and on his collaborations with Jon Hassel. The last third of the album calms back down with more placid ambient moods and ethereal washes and layers.
This is definitely a record to spend some time with as it doesn't quite reveal itself completely after two or even three listens. It's the best Eno record in years, which might not mean that much, but it's not for the easily dismissive. Like the best Eno records, it graciously rewards the patient.
Mixing elements of world, funk, dub, and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded -their- take on this fusion years before it became chic and of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, and were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so OF it's time as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records that you could listen to over and over, and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective, Excepter and even Glissandro 70, whose record we review elsewhere on this list. This reissue adds a handful of bonus tracks not on the original version and unlike most extras these are in fact all essential.
Recorded in 1980, The Plateaux of Mirror is the least successful of Eno's ambient works, with the exception of its success in being the blueprint for the myriad new age records that would soon follow in its footsteps. Budd's meandering legato piano lines sound so maudlin in comparison to the austere rigidity of Wyatt's playing on Music For Airports. There are less syrupy moments here that make for fine soundtracks. In fact, I think I've seen no less than a dozen student and/or low budget documentaries in my day that have used these tracks in their scores.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another disc we knew nothing about and just luckily stumbled across (with our interest whetted due to its label affiliation, Kning usually being quite interest-ing). We were initially struck by the gorgeous cover, an embroidered landscape, all oranges and blacks, the texture of the background fabric adding grit to the already dark and mysterious shapes and hues in the foreground. The words Farval Falkenberg printed in huge gold metallic letters, strangely poetic song titles.
We later discovered that this is in fact the soundtrack to a Swedish film, a coming of age story, sad and bittersweet, and the music couldn't be more perfect. The opening track had us completely smitten within seconds. A gorgeously melancholy acoustic guitar, spinning a soft sad melody, mournful and moody, the main melody is whistled, giving the track a certain childlike vibe, a bit of a Morricone / Bjorn Olsson feel too, it seriously gives us shivers just writing about it. Then the 'chorus' kicks in, and adds soft focus piano plinking in the background, another guitar higher up in the mix, simple tambourine percussion. It's so evocative, you can't help but let your mind start making up different scenes from this movie you've never seen. Lonely walks, sitting by the window, rain pouring down, wandering along railroad tracks, laying in bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Wow.
And the rest of the record is just as compelling. Every song a mini super emotional epic. Organs wheeze ominously, acoustic guitars flutter and flit, chimes drift and shimmer, the piano returns in dense swells, bits of static and glitchy hiss intrude like someone changing stations on the radio, there are creaks and groans, distant rumbles, bits of electronic skitter, subtle drones, chimes, bells, even the occasional vocals, but it's always about the guitar, it's delicate dreamlike melodies, and how it's so perfectly intertwined with the piano and the organ. So moving and intense. Think Rachel's, Dirty Three, Pinetop Seven, Japancakes, Godspeed, but somehow much less arty, and more genuine, subtly experimental, but practically perfect, dark, emotional, so incredibly moving. Makes us want to see the film so bad, but in the meantime, it's the ideal music for whatever film you have running through your head. And of course the absolutely perfect soundtrack for lonely walks, staring at the ceiling, staring out the windows in the rain, wandering along railroad tracks, etc...
All right, admittedly the "_______ meets _______" is an easy/lazy reviewer's tactic, but sometimes we've gotta use it. In Enon's case, it is Deerhoof meets Blonde Redhead, and no, it's not just because all three have Japanese chanteuses whose voices flitter up high into the rafters. We must stress that this is not a bad thing by any means. We love the tweaked lush stylings of all three bands! Where Enon stands apart from those two though is in their penchant for veering into more rugged, raucous terrain. John Schmersal hollers and snarls vocals along with the buzzing angular guitars (except for the song "Mr. Ratatatat" when he sounds a lot like Steve Bays of Hot Hot Heat!), but this grit and aggression is nicely tempered by the cooing high female voice of Ms Toko Yasuda who sounds more confident and downright sultry on Grass geysers... Carbon Clouds than on previous recordings. This is Enon at their most straightforwardly poppy, their punchiest and catchiest, but it's not without a trademark stormy, strange twist or two. Listening to this is like speeding along a winding road at midnight in the pitch black. As your headlights catch fleeting glimpses of mysterious structures and figures in the darkness, your mind juggles between the benevolent and malevolent. Enon's new album is a wild pop ride are just as likely to menace broodingly in the dark as burst out in a flurry of sparkling fireworks. Recommended!
Been wonderin' what ever became of Enon after their debut album (released in 2000) sorta fell through the cracks following the dissolution of their label See-Thru? Fret no longer, they are back with their sophomore effort on the much more sturdy label Touch & Go. High Society is another mishmash of styles (just as Believo was, but perhaps a bit more poppy and upbeat, and less eccentric and angular). Sometimes they quite adeptly meld the disparate elements into a sound of their own, other times less so. The third song "In This City" is quite Blonde Redhead-esque, but imagine Kazu Makino's expressive off-kilter vocals replaced by a more cloying baby doll delivery of -surprise!- former Blonde Redhead member Toko Yasuda (also of The Lapse). Despite this aspect, it unfortunately falls short of BR's art rock greatness in other ways as well. Somewhat lacking in dynamics, its single synth melodies take turns over a basic hi-hat/snare beat and sparsely funky bass line. Seemed like it was going somewhere, but didn't. When combined, Yasuda and John Schmersal's vocals - hers the soft kittenish coo, his a hoarse, Girls Against Boys / Jon Spencer sexed-up growl - often make for an interesting mix especially on tracks like "Natural Disasters" on which they come across as a sort of emo-new-wave girl/boy call and response. "Leave It To Rust" is a strangely intrusive mildly darkwave-ish number resembling something off of the recent Deadsy album. What other styles does Enon throw into the mix? Indie/college radio rock, trashy garage, and various shades of pop, but as mentioned earlier with varying degrees of success. Engineered by Girls Against Boys' Eli Janney and produced by Dave Sardy (alt-metal producer/engineer for the likes of Marilyn Manson and System Of A Down, formerly of Barkmarket and See-Thru label boss).
With no full length of brand new sparkling songs on the horizon from our beloved indie-power-pop superstars, Enon, this will have to do for now for all us fans. This collection of rarities and singles (mixed by Eli Janney -- formally of Girls vs. Boys) shows off John (Brainiac) and Toko (Blonde Redhead)'s looser, more experimental side of songwriting. Our favorite track here would have to be their super catchy, oompah noise-pop track, "Marbles Explode", a track that was cut from a previous album for some unexplained reason. Glad they finally put that out! This cd/dvd also exhibits their penchant for uber talented friends in the video and motion graphics industry, as an enclosed region-free dvd is devoted to an impressive collection of music videos. Long live ENON.
A painter of emotional torpor through sound, perhaps. Brian Pyle (also known for his work in Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings) returns with another cinematic gem of slow blooming atmospheres that ooze from his ever-reductive songs for pooling synth tones, ethereal yet weary guitar strum, and plenty of hypnotic ellipses that always seems floating halfway down deep sea trenches or recently jettisoned from an spacecraft's airlock. Even though this is very much a Brian Pyle production, he's employed the talents of Peter Broadrick to contribute live drums for one track, the synthwave coldness of Soft Metals on another, and especially the hitherto unknown vocalist J. Moon who croons perfectly in step with Pyle's shimmered portents. Badalamenti and Barry Adamson certainly have some very worthy competition in this longtime aQ favorite!
At his marine outpost on the western shore of Humboldt County, California, Brian Pyle (aka Ensemble Economique, as well as a member of the Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings) is in a prime location to dial into the ether for radiowaves across the Pacific. With the nearest communities of Eureka and Arcata far less irradiated with electro-magnetic interference which makes shortwave radio listening down right impossible in urban areas, and with Pyle's proximity to the Pacific Ocean (it's a couple hundred yards from his back door) acting as a massive antenna, he's able to listen to transmissions that seem to come from Russia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, China, and numerous other locales. Along with the baffling radio phenomena of utility signals and numbers stations, Pyle found himself captivated by the sounds of 'interval signals'. These are the specific sounds, phrases, or melodies that announce the end or beginning of a particular program. Often very simple, so as to work within the limitations of shortwave, these signals can sound very eerie and truncated when broadcast halfway around the world. Pyle first incorporated these sounds into a performance back in 2011 for 23five's now-defunct Activating The Medium festival, and those echoing phrases have become a staple in Pyle's live sets. So this entire album dedicated to interval signals, finds Pyle lacing these sounds with insistently dark, piano solos and bleak field recordings of abandoned spaces pounded by monsoonal winds and rains. Interval Signals is a very solitary, impressionist work, showing a sense of spaciousness found more in the likes of Basinski and Coleclough than in most of Pyle's previous work. Still very cinematic in scope, but its an entirely different movie for Pyle this time. A Pixelvision version of Last Year At Marienbad? Yeah, it's that cool.
Drugs. Hallucinations. Isolation. Death. Some pretty classic / heavy-as-fuck metaphors run through the work of Brian Pyle, the mad genius of Manilla Beach up in Humboldt County, California. He's been at it for a long time now, first knocking on our door with his homespun variations of floorcore psychedelia with the seemingly inactive collective Starving Weirdos; then, there was the fraternal act of nature jamming drones through RV Paintings; and Ensemble Economique is Pyle all by his lonesome, where he's proven deft at density of sound laced with a nocturnal pop streak that could even warrant some Demdike witchy references. Pyle's hypnotic structures are deceptively simple and proven emotively effective - a lilting layer of blown-out guitar drones cycling through elegiac melodies, another layer of electronic sequences, oceanic driftings, chanted vocalizations, rasps of bowed metals, maudlin church organ explorations, or thumming dial-tone samples, with crumbled film samples of what could be some Russian / French / Hong Kong noir film of some woman frantically whispering about some crime that may or may not have happened. The individual tracks glide into a purposeful, cinematic song cycle narrative that begins with the thoroughly gloomy, portentous opening track "If You Need Help" that is a real downer of an acid trip spent staring at a ghost ship sinking in the depths of the Pacific with sand, sea foam, and black rain kicking you in the face to make the sense of hopelessness all the more real. Pyle links the two sides of the album with "Ksenia" - a track split in half of percolating acidic electronic sequences girding those female vocal samples and guitar drones. By the end of the album, his delirious slow-motion take on '80s bombast lifts the album's weightiness with two drone-pop ballads of marching rhythms and radioluminescent hypno-melodies. Another mighty fine album from Brian Pyle!
First off, this is a super fucking limited cd-r, produced in the fog-laden confines of Manila, California by the one and only Brian Pyle. This dude is one of characters in the Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings, with Ensemble Economique being the moniker he's chosen for his solo work. The last couple of Ensemble Economique albums - especially the Psychical lp recorded for Not Not Fun - had been veering from a home-grown psychedelic improvisational splatter and into wonderfully off-kilter takes on cinematic melodrama. Psychical was clearly hedging towards the VHS-horror / John Carpenter vernacular, but here Pyle's jumping into dark-synth croon territory as he's molding sparse songs out of his morass of loops, witch house rhythmic skitter, and occasional arcs of luminous downer guitar tones. What's more is that Pyle SINGS throughout the album - not the reverb-soaked sustained caterwaul he would utter in the Weirdos, but more of a late-nite stoned balladeering that could have infected Pyle's brain from too many Miami Vice re-runs. One could imagine this to be Brian Pyle's ode to that show's incidental music - not the Don Johnson chase scene frenzy, but the crying tone-bent guitar excursions that would peg a scene's cinematic tragedy. Bits of dialogue splattered with delay tricks and synth nodes flash with neon intensity against Pyle's naked electronica, all of which was recorded in a marathon session on one day in the summer of 2011. It's pretty dang amazing actually, it even had folks coming up from the back room to find out what the heck was playing, which is always a good sign.
We're probably the only source for these discs... and who knows if more can be procured!
Bryan Pyle should no longer need much in the way of an introduction here at aQuarius as we've long championed the shambolic drone-pop and improbable psychedelia that Pyle has been crafting on the sodden beaches of Humboldt County, California. This once and future Starving Weirdo has been on a roll with his latest stream of Ensemble Economique work. Along with the two recent albums released by Denovali, there's this limited, one-sided picture disc produced for Dekorder's series of releases in conjunction with their tenth anniversary. The three tracks on No Thing-Ness represent a more caustic, more industrial aesthetic for Ensemble Economique, which never shied away from the haunted and the gothic; but here, there is a claustrophobia and paranoiac feel unlike much of Pyle's previous work. The opening cut "All Our Water" is a slinky, ritualized piece of electronica with Muslimgauze-like rhythms, hypnotic media samples, and buzzingly flanged guitar drones that exhibit colorations similar to those found in Soft Moon's motorik work. "Banking System" is the most sinister thing we've heard from Pyle yet, though the cybernetic concoction of monochromatic synth percolations somewhere between Conrad Schnitzler, John Carpenter, and maybe some Bourbonese Qualk. The lengthy "Dream Homes" layers tone-bent synth lines onto militaristic drum machine marches with radiophonic signal beacons and diabolically chanted vocals echoing throughout. A great release for sure, but we should note that it's unlikely we will be able to restock beyond what we currently have on the shelves.
The Italian horror artwork that graces Psychical is something of a red herring, as Brian Pyle guides his Ensemble Economique into the orbit of Conny Plank and Moebius in his use of electronics rather than one of Goblin or Zombi. Pyle is an artist who should need no introduction as one of principals in the Starving Weirdos as well as RV Paintings, with records on pretty much every cool label under the sun (Root Strata, Blackest Rainbow, Weird Forest, Olde English Spelling Bee, Digitalis, and now Not Not Fun). While the debut Ensemble Economique record was very much dialed into what Pyle was conjuring in RV Paintings through a superb stoner-zoner-drone vibe of gorgeous guitar shimmer and suspended harmonic intonations, his solo EE recordings have been carving out a separate identity other than the Starving Weirdos or RV Paintings. Beginning with the Standing Still, Facing Forward LP released earlier in 2010, Pyle's Ensemble Economique has been mining references from '70s and '80s progressive electronics, mostly looking back to those seminal Germans. Certainly, Holger Czukay, Plank, and Moebius come to mind; hell, even Cranioclast and Stockhausen wouldn't be that much of a stretch.
Psychical is wholly dark-trip cast upon waves of two note synth melodies that bounce back and forth against a backdrop of hand percussion and heavily looped drone-shadow. Snippets of dubbed voice and radio transmission crackle ooze a fourth-world, rhythmicist eeriness somewhere between Muslimgauze and that Zero Set record from Moebius and Plank, furthered along by bloodshot guitar snarls. Tom Carter makes a guest appearance on one of the track, bringing a rather incendiary prolonged solo to Pyle's raga-drone rhythms. All in all, another great record from Brian Pyle!
Ultra limited cassette from Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, 1/2 of Humboldt avant abstractionists Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. We've long loved the SW's sprawling rhythmic dronescapery, and on his own, Pyle explores similar sonic territory, but Pyle's approach sans partners seems to be more dense and dark, caustic and abrasive, the rhythmic element balancing the atmospheric elements, like here on the title track, which spreads out over all of the first side. A thick, swirling low end thrum oozes and undulates, it's a hazy blurred rumble, over which Pyle layers heaving shards of crunch, thick throbs, deep bell-like tones, rhythmic machine gun stutters, all of which pile up and overlap, creating a soft cacophony of clatter and crunch, chug and churn, a strangely haunting, and sorta noisy, almost industrial creepscape, that sounds like some weird hybrid of Wolf Eyes, Philip Jeck and Umberto performed by some strange robotic minimalist chamber ensemble. A swirling, heady, and darkly psychedelic barrage of loops and rhythms, layers and textures, mesmerizing and intense.
The flipside is another permutation of Pyle's abstract beat laden drones, another thick swirling morass of sitar-like buzz and sci-fi synth squelch, this time the beats buried, little flurries of stutter and shuffle, squalls of glitchy tangle, more coloring the proceedings than driving them. The last track is a tense soundtracky stretch of layered buzz, haunting melody, a sprawl of pulsing high end over deep ominous rumbles, like the music from the scariest moment in some lost Italian giallo, stretched out into minutes instead of seconds, all tension, no release, brooding and intense, haunting and mesmerizing, fantastic stuff.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! We only have a handful direct from Mr. Pyle himself when he was in town, and it's very likely that these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
Ensemble Pearl is a new psychedelic supergroup of sorts, featuring SUNNO))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley, Boris basher Atsuo, legendary Japanese psychedelic axeman Michio Kurihara, and William Herzog (guitarist for Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter) along with a handful of guests including violinist extraordinare Eyvind Kang. This unlikely collective have whipped up a heady brew of smoldering slow motion doom psych lumber and blackened kosmische drift, all murky and muddy, wasted and washed out, the core sound a smoldering, twang flecked tarpit trudge, a little bit Earth, a little bit Barn Owl, a little bit former Record Of The Weekers Torlesse Super Group - the same sort of windswept, apocalyptic, desert drone dirge, only this time, imbued with a pulsing psychedelic cosmic energy, a ferocity and intensity that seems to lurk just below the surface, as if barely restrained, a glowing black heart beating within Ensemble Pearl's bleak, bleary, blackly blissful exterior.
The sounds here are dense and dark, and yet simultaneously free and abstract, a trudging rhythmic plod, offering the only real structure, the sounds only tenuously moored to the surface, as if all it would take is a subtle shift in the solar winds, for the whole thing to drift heavenward, which it does at several points, the sound then seeming to blur into a more spaced out version of modern minimal dronemusic, almost like a more blackened, demonic Tangerine Dream, or a seriously sinister Phill Niblock, a hazy, softly churning kosmische thrum, lush and layered, pulsing and rich with chordal coloration and slow shifting overtones, laced with all manner of mysterious tonal shifts, like the soundtrack to some super abstract sci-fi art film, those stretches of droned out buzz could be the music of the cosmos, the streaks and contrails in the night sky translated into sound, a haunting, serene sonic stasis, that still somehow seems to be in perpetual motion, tranquil, slow swirling clouds of sonic debris, imbued with a warm glow of divine dreaminess.
But those sounds invariably coalesce into the dark dirgery that defines Ensemble Pearl's soundworld, the record bookended by to slowburn epics, the closer maybe our favorite, an epic sprawl of smolder and shimmer, a dreamy sonic death march, the guitars doused in reverb, the drums subtly dubbed out, the whole thing a woozy weary wander, a skeletal slo-mo lope through softly undulating swirls of smokey chordal shimmer, and heaving hushed drones, wreathed, like the opener, in fragmented shards of blurry ambience, spidery melodic tangles, the soaring sheets of keening high end here muted and smeared into distant glimmers, the occasional howl of feedback, or soft squalls of achingly keening high end guitarnoise, disappearing into fields of dubdrone blur, before returning to the motorik dirge creep that churns ever onward, gradually disappearing into a hushed field of atmospheric black buzz, warm and darkly billowing.
Fans of minimal drone smolder and abstract cosmic psychedelic space-doom drift will be in heaven.
The Art Of Being comes courtesy of Minimal Wave, the label that has been digging deep, very deep into the realms of post-punk and new wave to uncover many a release that might have been lost otherwise. For those who have procured plenty of terminal obscurities from such blogspots as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music, or Systems of Romance, some of the vinyl-only reissues on Minimal Wave may be familiar. But these are no grey area reissues. Minimal Wave has assured us that they have taken great care to procure the rights for each of these recordings!
Ensemble Pittoresque was an obscure Dutch electro-punk band, who managed to release a couple of LPs in the mid '80s. Having been averse to performing live, they didn't garner that much of a following beyond the small distribution they had managed throughout the Netherlands and a few neighboring countries. The Art Of Being is a collection of lost recordings, none of which had been released until this edition for Minimal Wave. Ensemble Pittoresque submitted some of this material as a demo to Polydor in 1982, only to fail to move beyond opening negotiations. The recordings are very synth heavy, drawing in equal parts from John Carpenter's soundtracks, Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, and the early albums by the Human League. Amidst the icy bellowing from the synth melodies and sci-fi eerieness, Ensemble Pittoresque dotted their songs with acoustic guitars and vocals buried deep in the mix. Really great stuff, we must say!
Hail! Our favorite Viking black metal band is back again, with another tour-de-force, their 11th full-length album. A long way from where they started with their first teenaged demo back in 1991, and amazingly still totally kicking ass, artistically and otherwise (unlike a lot of their contemporaries from the '90s Norwegian black metal scene who have definitely fallen off). Nowadays, Enslaved play "Viking Metal" as if Vikings grew up listening to tons of '70s prog rock like King Crimson, Yes, and Pink Floyd. They've been sailing their longboats in that direction for quite a while, on such great releases as Monumension, Isa, and Below The Lights. And their previous album, Vertebrae, was probably their spaciest, most Floydian excursion yet. If you were on board for that one, you should like new one this too, which while of course quite proggy, seems heavier and more fearsome sounding than the relatively mellow Vertebrae. "Clean" melodic vocals are still present, confidently so, along with plenty of nasty blackened raspy vokills of course. The clean singing towards the end of opener "Ethica Odini" might throw the unexpectant listener for a Radiohead/Muse styled loop, but as majestically "poppy" as it gets there, Enslaved maintain an equally extreme allegiance to the metal side of the equation elsewhere in the same song. So it goes throughout the record, with memorable melodies languidly adjacent to uptempo aggressive outbursts, the ardently experimental Enslaved juggling jagged orchestration, jazzy chords, complex rhythms, lush symphonics, atmospheric ambience (the lulling droney soundscape of "Axioma"), and straight-up metal mayhem. Somehow the sudden sonic shifts are accomplished oh so smoothly, so this disc is simultaneously speedy and haunting. While fire and steel are part of their arsenal, these Vikings also know how to conquer with catchiness!
Ivar Bjornson, Grutle Kjellson, Dirge Rep and R. Kronheim are Enslaved. We mention them individually because they and their band deserve to be household names, at least among Aquarius customers. Enslaved are definitely one of our absolute favorite Norwegian
Ok, enough hyperbole (for the moment). What's "Monumension" really like, and how *does* it compare exactly to "Mardraum"? Well, somebody had told us to expect that the new Enslaved would sound like Genesis, but that's definitely not the case. True, '70s prog rock a la Genesis (or, maybe more accurately, King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator) certainly flows in the blood of Grutle, Ivar and Co., along with the more ancient blood of their Norse ancestors. Opeth fans will hear the parallels. But are they truly warriors of modern prog? Not quite, as they are so much more. The first thing an Enslaved fan will notice is the surprising prevalence of death metal style vocals alongside the black metal rasps and Viking chants. Vocally, lyrically and musically, this is some seriously heavy stuff, and violent. But it all flows, sometimes into realms so tripped-out and Floyd-ishly psychedelic that you'll forget you're listening to "metal" at all. But then, the next song will start with a blood-quickening, bone-jarring riff to remind you. Like on "Mardraum", the band brilliantly weaves various metal/rock styles into pure Enslaved music, perhaps upping the "folk" aspect a bit (which balances those death metal elements nicely). There's even a bonus track by a related band called HOV (Trygve Mathiesen and a "tribal choir" which includes all the members of Enslaved) that's meant to evoke traditional Viking music -- although the band stresses that "Enslaved has never been about reproduction or literal interpretations. It is more of a quest for creating our own musical traditions and dimensions. The band is built upon the philosophy, magick and myths of the Vikings, not a desire to dress like they did during a historical period or to talk exactly like them. It is something deeper than a mere roleplay to please the outer eyes and ears." These efforts by Enslaved certainly have resulted in surreal, epic, timeless metal for the mind, body and soul.
So yes, these rune-obsessed geniuses, mere youngsters wise beyond their years, have created another utter masterpiece. And it's not just me -- everyone I've discussed this record with agrees that it's amazing. Arrrgh -- my fanboy ramblings can't even begin to do it justice. Emperor, Satyricon, Ulver are all great Norwegian black metal bands that in various ways and to various degress have also branched out into the beyond, but Enslaved are something else again.
We've always wondered why Entrance never got the appreciation they seemed to so fully deserve. But we're thinking might just get set straight with Prayer of Death. Where past releases displayed totally gifted guitar player Guy Blakeslee in a fucked up drugged out modern blues context, Prayer Of Death demonstrates a new urgency and pretty much an entirely new sound. With an over the top (in a great way!) delivery, including an amplified electric orchestra, a paranoid disposition, and death on his mind, Blakeslee has made his most intense and rocking record to date. Maybe it was his move from Baltimore to LA but his flamboyant nature has totally come to the surface and we couldn't be happier. He still plays amazing raga-like guitar, and his sound is still a wander in haunted woods but now he's got ROCK on his radar, all throughout Prayer Of Death. Imagine Sandy Bull joining Queen and you start to get an idea of the fucked up beauty that is this record. You get the feeling something really monumental must have occurred in Blakeslee's life, because these are the sounds of someone with a newfound spirit, not taking anything for granted, making the most out of every note and channeling all the energy, emotion and life into every song he can. We've ALL been digging this record like crazy. So fucking good!
