A sonic reimagining of a follow up to the Arabian Nights, this is perhaps one of the most out there, druggy and experimental of the Chinese independent records we have carried as of late. Yang Fan, who produced the Chui Wan record we made record of the week a few lists ago and is the guitarist and songwriter for other Chinese groups like Ourselves Beside Me and Hang On The Box, has produced a solo record of elegant bedroom-psych miniatures that spins a nocturnal fairy tale of wonder and dread. Largely instrumental with a few key moments of witchy ethereal commune folk singing, this reminds us of some far out combination of Gong, Woo, Magical Power Mako, and Alastair Galbraith, with a uniquely dreamy Chinese folk-classical bent. Kotos, melodicas, guitars and glockinspiels weave into various field recordings of crows and rivers and hushed female voices drawing a narrative of princesses and witches, emperors and snowmen. Getting weirder, dreamier and more sublime with each track culminating in a whirling torrent of chaotic sound where the distinction between dreams and reality remain forever blurred.
Fantastic!
We're actually glad Yo La Tengo isn't more prolific and makes us wait a few years before each release. This way we eagerly anticipate each new album and fully savor it once it's finally here. There's always a give and take of expectation too, we know inside and out what YLT's basic sonic template will be, but there's always a loose thematic exploration or vague organizing principle behind each release that gets changed up each time. The last two, Popular Songs, and I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, were largely kitchen sink affairs in terms of style and duration, mixing cool genre pop experiments of Motown soul and country with long excursions into indie psych rock. Fade by contrast is their most compact and concise full length in over a decade with just 10 songs in about 45 minutes (the deluxe vinyl comes with a bonus 7" with two covers of a Todd Rundgren song and a Times New Viking song, as well as a download coupon that also includes a bonus new 11 minute track, the ambient instrumental "Oriole"). But the brevity of length on the album proper brings greater focus to the nuanced details of each song. Produced by John McEntire of Tortoise in a wonderful collaboration we are surprised hasn't happened long before now. This may be the band's best sounding record yet.
Whether it's their overall best record is always debatable, but every YLT record satisfies us on some level like a dear old friend, and all of us of course have our own favorites. Fade hearkens back to the softer pastoral sensitivity of 2003's Summer Sun without so much of that album's cosmic free jazz flourishes. Instead, each track on Fade is a tightly composed slice of indie pop economy with attentive detail to arrangement and production: The warm warble of the organ, the brilliant reverbed guitar tones, the subtle chamber orchestration of horns and strings that are peppered about, but used with restraint, and of course the sublime vocal harmonies. Definitely a great morning record to get your day started. Not a game changer by any means, but in the band's 30 year history, who's really expecting one at this point. At least they remain firmly on top of their game, and that's all that matters.
For Leaf's 20th anniversary, they have been reissuing some of their most essential releases like Caribou's Up In Flames, Colleen's Everyone Alive Wants Answers and this one, Susumu Yokota's sublime electronic masterpiece, Sakura. Yokota died last year after a long period of illness, and looking back we realized we reviewed almost every one of his releases except for what is arguably his best album, this one. Released in 2000, it it was proclaimed The Wire's top electronic release of the year.
Beginning his career as a house DJ, Yokota later developed an interest in modernist composition, traditional Japanese melodies and ambient textures, eschewing beats almost altogether on Sakura. Instead, like delicate birdsong, the melodies emerge like blossoming flowers, employing thoughtfully used samples of Steve Reich, Joni Mitchell and Return to Forever, in ways that evoke their sonorous qualities without relying on their recognizability. An incredible release that still sounds beautifully timeless.
Compact disc version included!
A brand new solo incarnation from San Francisco based multi-instrumentalist Trevor Montgomery (Lazarus, Tarentel, The Drift), Young Moon evokes the romantic and wistful jangle pop of early eighties groups such as Durutti Column, The Lilac Time and Autumn Fair. Far from the downer croon of Lazarus, Montgomery employs a hazy autumnal shimmer of synths and guitars with vocal treatments pushed back in the mix in songs that explore love's gains as well as losses. At times Montgomery's vocals evoke early Springsteen with some obscure C86 band backing him, but this album is more than a culmination of influences and moods. It's a genuinely heartfelt and sincere approach to music making with some of Montgomery's best songwriting to date. A beautiful record to wake up to as our warm summers make way for the chill of the fall.
Sometimes you know a record is gonna blow your mind before you even throw it on. Such is most definitely the case with Isophonic Boogie Woogie by Roland P. Young. Heck, it's called Isophonic Boogie Woogie after all! And it's on the seemingly infallible (and impossible to pin down) EM records from Japan who have quickly become our new favorite label, having released Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds, Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed and Sam Moore's MOOOHIEEE! and those are just the ones we've reviewed so far. Plus it's got super tripped out black and white hand drawn cover art, three heads, presumably all Mr. Young, one with a well groomed afro, one with headphones, one with crazy hair that drifts skyward like tentacles, and a third eye right in the center of his forehead, while surrounding the heads are leaves and electronic equipment, and ankhs, and black suns, scorpions, saxophones, sailing ships and cars and pyramids, and a bunch of little Roland P. Young's walking up hillsides, jamming on guitars, getting into cars... you get the idea. This is some seriously far out stuff, and we haven't even heard a note of music, and that's a heck of a lot of trippiness to live up to.
Thankfully, Isophonic Boogie Woogie is as weird and as wacked as all the above business would lead you to believe. Originally released in 1980, Isophonic Boogie Woogie was the first realization of Young's unique version of free jazz music, which he referred to as "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which on closer listening is WAY more spot on. Young employs an unlikely arsenal: Kalimba, saxophone, voice, clarinet, electronic bass clarinet, bells, chimes, electronic drones, electronic pulse and electronic accoutrements (!), to craft his spaced out free jazz minimalism. The first track is a warm melodic fugue, woven from the reverberating steel of the kalimba (sounding like a muted mellow version of Konono No.1 actually) with soaring falsetto vocals, before eventually a saxophone joins in, playing soft moody melodies over the rich bed of the kalimba. So nice. Wouldn't mind a whole record of this. But Young has different ideas. The second track is a brief but aggressive blast of solo clarinet, emitting gritty rumbles, a series of droney duck calls, very textural and oblique, and really mysterious sounding. As is the next track, an ominous low end groove, warm distorted and muted melodies, the electronic bass clarinet strangely alien sounding, a groovy jazzy thrum, pulsing and throbbing each note with a strange texture and a bizarre electronic after image that makes the whole thing sound that much more dark and droney. The record's centerpiece (and longest track) is "Loveliness", a 15 minute drift of dense ambient whirs, subtle drones, tinkling chimes, softly struck bells, sizzling cymbals and all sorts of percussive clatter, all beneath a wild free jazz workout, skronks and squeaks and trills, impossible melodies, a tangled free form melodic freakout. Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music indeed! The last track is another long one, with more of that alien sounding electronic bass clarinet, the notes and tones low and rough, with lots of reverbed echoes, the track starts as a thick corrosive drone of rumbling warbling horns, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spacey effects, swooping and swooning, before the clarinet begins to explore its freedom and offers up a litany of strange sounds, from free jazz skronk to percussive patter to playful melodic figures, before drifting back into a droning murky swirl.
Some of the coolest, weirdest, most far out free jazz we've heard for sure, and another check in the 'right fucking on!' column for EM!
This reissue includes two bonus tracks, one a shuffling funky rhythm, with primitive drum machine over a warm distant sonic glow. swooning sax, like mood music from some long forgotten eighties soundtrack, the other a soft stretch of dreamy mediation music, subtle electronic pulses beneath a swirling wash of moaning horns and shifting subtle tones. Both more melodic and less tripped out than the original tracks but cool nonetheless.
Like all the EM reissues, this includes extensive liner notes (all in Japanese, sorry), tons of photos, original album artwork and more.
While we have always loved Zombi's proggy and tense synth thrillers, we've secretly wished they would cut loose a bit, add some hi-hat fills and give us the dark and sexy slow euro-disco we always knew they were capable of. The actively atmospheric sounds of John Carpenter's Escape From New York and French disco pioneers, Cerrone were really baby steps apart from each other in the first place, so we weren't surprised (but we were elated!) when a Zombi track, "Sapphire" showed up on Swedish DJ Prins Thomas's awesome compilation, Cosmo Galactic Prism, that really honed in on that late seventies / early eighties coke-mirror sound. "Sapphire" had earlier appeared on Zombi's out of print, tour-only ep Digitalis. Well, we finally have the 12" single release of "Sapphire" in its entire extended nine+ minute glory, and it's killer!! The vibe is definitely inspired by Cerrone's Frankenstein fantasy, "Supernature", with its vaguely sinister build-up, but it expands in interesting ways taking us into trancey rhythmic shifts and changes that never let up the dirty space disco late-night groove. The b-side features a track, "Long Mirrored Corridor", that ups the dark druggy disco perversions of Black Devil Disco Club, while the Escort Remix of "Sapphire" distills the long version's twists and turns into a more digestible dancefloor friendly version. So good!!!
Only the second release on this new The Rapture-run label, and doubtless limited in edition.
