First we've heard from this new local label, and the debut recording from Some Ember, aka Dylan Travis, who was laid up after an accident, and decided to spend his settlement on a bunch of gear (and from the sounds here, he must have been on plenty of pain killers too!), building this record from scratch, and learning to record in the process, but you'd never know it from the results. It's a dark, lush landscape of brooding, swirling post punk cold wave minimalism, all pulsing muted synths, spare percussion, shimmery atmospheres, thick, crumbling industrial swells, hushed melancholic melodies, all blurred into a murky, washed out dirge pop dreamscape, sounding a bit like a more lysergic Talk Talk, driven by Travis' vocals which at times sound like Danzig covering Scott Walker, and at others like some impossible hybrid of Antony and Dave Gahan, soaring and passionate, emotive and dramatic, we really weren't prepared to dig this as much as we do. Fantastic!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
It seems in the past couple of years, electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel has gone from an obscure cult-figure to a championed celebrity right before our eyes. Thanks in part to a key sound design role in this past summer's blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games, but also to this incredible, and indeed expanded reissue of her 1980 debut release, The Expanding Universe, complete with an extra disc of bonus material from the period and extensive liner notes by Spiegel herself. Following key archival releases from fellow female electronic innovators Daphne Oram, Maggie Payne and Suzanne Ciani, we're finally seeing Spiegel getting her due for her stellar accomplishments as both captivating composer and inventor.
While The Expanding Universe was released in 1980, it was made up of musical experiments Spiegel made throughout the seventies in her off time as a research scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories where she developed unique modes of combining interactive and algorithmic computer logic to the compositional process. Originally released on folk label, Philo, Spiegel's organic compositions had more in common with folk music than one would initially suspect. A trained banjo, lute and mandolin player, Spiegel's first released recording, "Appalachian Grove I" was included on the groundbreaking compilation of female electronic composers, New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, where she applied the idea of an open tuned string instrument to her electronically created composition. The entire Appalachian Grove suite is included here and is an unlikely mix of John Fahey and Philip Glass, where banjo-like tonal arpeggiations become a rhythmically organic and pulsating layered stream of undulating sounds. With each piece Spiegel seems to strive to explore the boundaries of the compositional process with a determined zen like focus on how sounds interact and overlap. But this is not an academically minded process of willful bleeps and bloops. This is instead a carefully realized beautifully layered intuitive sonic constructions that rewards deeply concentrated listening. Easily some of the best and most effective second generation electronic music we've ever heard, which gives this reissue our highest recommendation!
The Survival were a Mexican psychedelic rock band circa 1970, who played morbid, melancholy acid-blues and warped beat music, with an oddly apocalyptic sense of freak-humor, reflected in song titles like "The World Is A Bomb", "Electric Chair", "Nothings
The latest record from former Yellow Swan finds Pete Swanson continuing to explore/dissect/reimagine/reinvent his own mutant strain of techno. Like on his recent Man With Potential lp, the sounds here are raw and chaotic, home brewed and noisy, a lot like what you might have imagined a techno Yellow Swans might have sounded like. The framework is classic, a thumping four on the floor, but it's the setting and surroundings that makes Swanson's sound so compelling. Very much like the more beat oriented jams of Our Love Will Destroy The World, or the dancefloor experiments of Astral Social Club, Swanson seems to be coming at techno from a similarly genuine, yet sonically removed, angle, a bit of kitchen sink, mad scientist noisiness, with lots of the sounds obviously culled from an arsenal of synths and drum machines that are not all that dissimilar from what he employed in his noise making floorcore days. But Swanson has definitely proven himself, this is no mere dalliance, these jams are fierce and driving, and in a weird way, seriously funky. The title track here is a mesmerizing blast of super layered, heavily textured techno, that has SO much going on. Total maximalist techno, tangled melodies, chirping fragments of high end, thick shard of rumbling bass thrum, the sort of groove you never want to end. The VIP mix of the same song, just strips back the melody, and piles on the noise, adding even more hiss and glitch, the bassline pushed up in the mix, woozy and hypnotic, the sounds sharp and jagged, and yet the whole thing somehow still so mesmerizing and kinda catchy. The idea that you could get this sort of thing stuck in your heard, seems preposterous, until you find yourself humming these sort of melodies, hours later.
The B side is the real gem here, a sprawling expanse of minimal noisescapery, all washed out shimmer, fluttery fragmented high end melodies, and super spare skeletal skitters, everything beneath a layer of gauzy ethereal hum, the vibe way less electronic, and more sort of Jeck / Tim Hecker style soft noise ambience, the beats not so much beats, as just more texture, buried rhythms and blurred pulsations, even filling up a whole side, you'll find yourself lifting the needle and playing it again and again and again.
Saucy retro Chippendales cover art too.
The second release from local electronic collective T H E M A Y S (that's how it's written according to the group), and like the last one, a limited cd-r on Gigante Sound, this tape is the work of a special group of music makers, as T H E M A Y S is actually a school project, or rather a project based out of a school, in which kids are taught to make music, record, compose, play instruments, and the results are then released, this tape the product of various recording and editing sessions between students and instructors, and it's a doozy, loping electronic soundscapes, super atmospheric, like the last record, but this one way more beat heavy, sounding like something that should have come out on Anticon, the same sort of lush collaged avant hip hop soundscapery, the tones lush and warm, the beats loping and groovy, the tracks here are pretty fantastic, layered and intricate, gristly statick woven into dreamy billows of chordal shimmer, and swirling FX, all anchored to hypnotic electro-hop grooves. Super cool!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Stranger and stranger Darren Tate gets, even as he releases this set of previously unreleased archival material from 1986-87, which finds Tate rummaging around in his garden shed and garage with an unnamed collaborator creating all sorts of clamorous textures, metallic klangs, and screeched bowed drones in a picnic-on-a-summer-afternoon take on the bleak industrial ritualism that was oozing up from the European soils (e.g. Metgumbnerbone, Zero Kama, Ain Soph, and plenty of lesser acolytes from the Temple of Psychick Youth). The spaciousness of Calm In A Teacup does recall the documentary / field recording agenda that Organum offered forth a year later on the magnificently mysterious Vacant Lights album; and a similar metaphysical time/space warp occurs here in Tate's recording through the interplay between the environmental sounds and the hands-on clattering. Very little of the sounds have much in the way of effects or treatments, mostly just the natural echo within the garage and / or shed. Nonetheless, the whole album is pretty zonked-out along a similar axis to Richard Youngs, Taj Mahal Travellers, or Avarus. One would hardly believe Tate would have made records with Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter that would sound so bloody sensible in comparison to this. Signed and number by Darren Tate himself. Just 100 copies.
Last year was an exciting one for Sleater Kinney fans, as three members reemerged in new projects. Corin Tucker on her own, and Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weis together in the super group Wild Flag. While the Wild Flag record was pretty great, as was Tucker's solo debut, neither managed to reach the level of total exuberance that Sleater Kinney created back in the day. But Kill My Blues is a whole 'nother story, as Tucker's sophomore full length is brimming with the sort of passion, guts, sweat, smarts, and energy that made Sleater Kinney so special.
On Kill My Blues, we discover that despite her friend and ex-bandmate Carrie Brownstein's new found fame from her hit show Portlandia and her more visible role in Wild Flag, it is indeed Tucker who holds the keys to the musical magic that made so many of us fall in love with SK in the first place. Sure Brownstein always looked more cool, and stole the spotlight on stage with her awesome moves, but it's the guttural howl of Tucker's voice, the wail of her guitar, and her intense delivery in general that really provides the knockout punch.
Kill My Blues is as focused as any record that SK made. Tucker sounds impassioned and confident, her songs exploding with sparkling velocity, punk energy, and crazy catchy melodies. Highly recommended!
For their second cd and first full length, The Union Trade's previous post-rock leanings are embraced by their fuzzy indie rock selves. Definitely brings to mind the slouchy, slightly dour charm of '90s college rock kingpins Sebadoh and Seam... for sure a good thing in our books! They've stripped back quite a bit of the guitar effects which dominated their previous release 2007's Now The Swell ep (or perhaps have more thoroughly integrated them), and have retained a nice warm blanket of reverb and gentler squalls of distortion. They're much more vocal heavy too. Eleven terrific songs for these overcast drizzly days!
We've reviewed a few releases by freaking intense, seemingly unhinged, utterly nihilistic Japanese saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe in the past, stuff released on labels like PSF and Tiliqua, including a collaboration with veteran Tokyo Flashback act Kousokuya, saying in one of our reviews that Urabe is "is pretty far out there in the field of free improvisation", which if anything is an understatement. So out there that he's been quoted as saying "Improvisation can eat shit", apparently considering his music something else entirely. Well, if you're up for some of whatever Urabe's output is, here's a new one from the man via the reliable Utech label, who know their out there eat shit improv all right. Painful beauty, delicate brutality, noisy silence� These are the extremes with which Urabe both enraptures and unsettles the once-innocent listener. And it's not all his anguished alto sax, in fact, the very first nine-minute-plus track is more of an incredibly lo-fi, uber-distorted electric guitar feedback freakout full of raw, choppy riffage. Urabe on this album also makes use of harmonica, bird calls, and even metal chains, the ominous rattle of which we also remarked upon when heard on one of his previous PSF albums. Furthermore, Aural Fit's drummer Teruhisa Nanbu shows up on two of the (longest) tracks here, as well. The skitter and skree can be quite lonely and lovely, for sure...but beware, as Urabe has his bloodthirsty side, too, as alluded to above (and below)! Making music 'difficult listening' is his mission.
The usual nice, slim and oversized Utech packaging includes some, uh, motivational liner notes by Urabe ("If there's someone you want to kill, stop working out how you're going to do it and just do it"), in English translation by Alan Cummings.
Just from the title alone, we knew that this latest installment in the always-amazing Sublime Frequencies series of unusual and under-documented "world music" recordings was gonna be the bomb! Indeed it is. The 'exotic' and infectious verve of vintage Bollywood film soundtrack music, performed with electric steel guitar as lead instrument for extra awesomeness, is hard to beat! The steel guitar, bringing with it the groovy twang of Western Swing and Hawaiian fret-sliding flavor, as well as a measure of classical Indian music, easily effects an emotive echo of the human voice that ordinarily fronts Bollywood themes. Compiler Stuart Ellis' informative liner notes describe these instrumental pop versions of Hindi film hits as the "elevator music of India" and if that's the case, we'd definitely rather be stuck in an elevator in Mumbai than anywhere else. There's 21 rare tracks by a half dozen masterful Bollywood steel string slingers: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, Charanjit Singh, and Guatam Dasgupta, recorded between 1962 and 1986.
A completely captivating collection, already one of our favorites among the many great Sublime Frequencies releases. And probably it should be no surprise that, for example, Van Shipley's "Jan Pahechan Ho" from the 1966 film Gunaam immediately gives us Sun City Girls flashbacks...
Yay, here's the 3rd vinyl release from Sham Palace, the internationally-minded reissues label run by our pal Mark Gergis (Neung Phak, Porest, Mono Pause) as sort of an adjunct to the other "world music" label he's involved with, the celebrated Sublime Frequencies. We're all for it, Sham Palace just makes it like Sublime Frequencies releases are more, uh, frequent. The previous two offerings from Sham Palace were devoted to Middle Eastern "Dabke" music, one a record from aQ fave Omar Souleyman and the other a comp. But for this lp, something different, from a different (but still Islamic) part of the world. Mark has compiled just what the subtitle says: Pan-Indonesian Pop, Folk, Instrumentals & Children's Songs, 1970s-1980s. It's a diverse selection, the dozen tracks here variously representing different genres as well as coming from different islands - Java and Sumatra - in the Indonesian archipelago. But all, to some degree or other, hybridize both traditional Indonesian musics and Western rock/pop styles. There's folk-rock, and funk, and Bollywood inspired pop, and child singers, and plenty of synth. And all the tracks are pretty darn great - which of course is precisely what we'd expect from this label & compiler. So, highly recommended.
Vinyl-only, limited to 1000 copies!
Debut from this French black metal supergroup, featuring members of Ataraxie, Hyadningar, Funeralium, Mhonos and others, who here have come together to conjure up a heady strain of avant psychedelic blackness. Present are the usual BM tropes of course - blasting beats, buzzing insectoid riffing, harsh demonic vokills - but all of that stuff is reimagined and recontextualized into something much more abstract, a swirling, psychedelic blackened mesmer, those blasting relentless beats suspended in field of crystalline minor key guitar melodies and black ambient swirls, everything wreathed in a smeary black buzz. And even in full on blast/buzz mode, instead of sounding blown out and super distorted, the sound is more smeary and indistinct, washed out and weirdly hazy, the vibe much more droned out and trancelike than brutal and black, transforming here and there into Voivod like black prog, and often slipping into distinctly un-black-metal-like sprawls of clean guitar shimmer, mesmerizing Slint like post rock lope. The group do occasionally explode into a more punkish pound, but the bulk of the record is spent drifting through strangely ethereal black clouds of blurred buzz, minimal post metal Ved Buens Ende style dirgery, and hauntingly atmopsheric psychedelic black minimalism, culminating in the stunningly gorgeous ambient closer, all whirling processed murk, muted melancholic melodies, lush layered shimmer, and chiming bell like melodies. So good!
Yay, at long last (five years!) the return of our/your/everyone's favorite Swedish retro-proto-metallers, Witchcraft! With this, their fourth album, they've moved on from their previous label Rise Above to a new home on bigger label Nuclear Blast. They've also altered their lineup quite a bit, though of course mainman Magnus Pelander remains at the mic (though he's not playing guitar anymore, for some reason, concentrating solely on vocals). Going through changes� without changing -too- much, as far as us listeners are concerned, thankfully. Even with a new drummer and two new guitarists, this still sounds of a piece with the Witchcraft of olde, certainly in part due to the distinctive, emotive, melodic vocal stylings of Pelander. We just love his voice, and he puts on a great performance here. He's got flair, the whole band does.
Musically, Legend is maybe a bit more modern and slickly produced than previous Witchcraft outings, and certainly they didn't get rawer or heavier, no. The direction they took was onwards and upwards. But the influence of such vintage greats as Black Sabbath and Pentagram hasn't exactly waned, though nowadays we'd be more likely to describe Witchcraft as being their own psychedelic, doomy, melodic, proggy, heavy rock thing. Good meaningful music, well played, with lots of both light and shade - lumbering riffs, lovely vox, great guitarwork� Now, someone here thought that this new Witchcraft showed signs of being "success rock", whatever that means, and someone else here (Andee) thought some of it sounded a bit like Queens Of The Stone Age (meant, he assured us, as a compliment!), and yeah sure this is perhaps geared to appeal to a bigger audience than the record collecting '70s downer rock nerds that Witchcraft themselves once were (and heck, still are - after all, the likes of "Dystopia" here sounding like something off of one of Sabbath's final few Ozzy-era albums like Never Say Die). But, whatever. At the risk of sounding snobby, very few bands who get big are really all that great, but Pelander and Witchcraft definitely deserve all their success, so we won't hold it against 'em. Longtime Witchcraft fans, you have nothing to worry about, listen to "It's Not Because Of You" ferinstance and tell us that it doesn't sound like it coulda been on The Alchemist or Firewood. Once again, we're happily enscorcelled by this Witchcraft - and hope it won't be another five years between albums, again!
Domestic vinyl version coming out later in October, fyi.
