UbuWeb posted a link earlier this week of what is (presumably) the C side of a 2LP of 2008, John Cage/Terry Fox - HighFidelity. I had the pleasure of finishing the gatefold sleeves of the to 1000 copies limited remastered recordings of some rather experimental recording sessions in the middle of a lake. The album contained one vinyl of John Cage material and one with Terry Fox material, entitled Mureau. Copies were hard to come by so the link hunting continues for the rest of the release. Some outtakes from the gatefold can be found here.
The recordings and catalogue were released in conjunction with the exhibition HIGH FIDELITY Artists' Records in the Marzona Collection.
Mureau was originally released as a cassette on Edition S Press (S Press Tape No. 14). It was recorded at the S-Press studio in Hattingen, Germany, on October 3, 1972. Culvert was a 24 hour performance, with Bootz Hubbard and Bill Gilbert participating the 1st two hours. It was recorded at Clark Fork River, Missoula, Montana, USA, 1977. -discogs
4/10 It May Never End is the one-man project of a former DJ/Producer with an interest for dance and club music. After his adventures on the UK scene, he was struck by the post-rock genre - realizing the startling potential of this niche. An old love for the guitar was rekindled, and Such is Life is the result of that new found creative outlet.
The seven-track debut is obviously inspired by the usual suspects - This Will Destroy Mono in the Sky would be a band name suggestion that captures It May Never End's sonic pallette perfectly. With a plethora of similar bands aiming for their place in the spotlight of this crowded, global scene, the criteria for success come down to the finer details of the release. The performance, production, originality and creativity - even packaging - all make an album stand out from the pack. All of the pieces need to fit perfectly before an album or band can rise up to the level of greatness where it can be worthy of a score that leads the curve rather than following it.
It May Never End's debut material tells us that most of the basics are covered; the combination of the downright ambient with post-rock structures and climaxes is well spread over the album. There is a notable potential in the music as such, but the manner in which it is presented is one that recalls a recording in a rehearsal room with one microphone and a tapedeck. This can have a certain charm or romantic flair to it, but for a full length album, it doesn't work.
This is where the album offers plenty of room for improvement. As if somehow the mid-range sonic spectrum wasn't fully present on the release, most of the aural space is made up out of low and high frequencies. As a result, most of the bass and deeper background form a mismatched whole with the abundance of high range of frequencies. The middle range, and thus most of the guitar and rhythm, is lost in the poor mastering.
It's a shame that this artist doesn't get the chance to offer the complete picture of his music on this album. Most of the post-rock touch gets lost through the absence of it's frequencies, but when the ambient work takes center stage, the mixing issues tend to fade away. This can only spark a hope that IMNE's next effort will address this concern and push itself to the other side of the scoring curve. Who knows, perhaps the skill formed by working in electronica can make this project a leader in its niche. If you're the kind of person that likes the promise of what could be (in the form of a free download!), this is one to spend your bandwith on.
2 months to the new Russian Circles album Geneva. Which means it's time to get excited, mark it in your agenda and what else not.
The genre-bending instrumental trio known as Russian Circles will be releasing their third album, Geneva, on October 20th through Suicide Squeeze. Produced by Brandon Curtis of the Secret Machines, Geneva promises a slew of hypnotic shred epics, the tracklist for which is below. Catch them live this summer on July 18th at Dudefest in Indianapolis, IN, and keep a look out for more supporting tour dates.
1. Fathom 2. Geneva 3. Melee 4. Hexed All 5. Malko 6. When the Mountain Comes to Muhammad 7. Philos
As surprising of a listen it initially is, as it turns weird and creepy towards the middle. Some nice hidden gems and great closing for not just your average mixtape.
I usually make mixtapes to go running or if I am driving somewhere or if I want people to dance, but none of this sounds really romantic enough for a feature such as this. So I am going all in. A tape for those who are about to drown, is quite dramatic and will suit this occasion fine.
Elvis Presley - Blue Moon - Without a hope in my heart, without a love of my own. Along with Wicked Game, this was the single most inspiring song for our new album. I once played it 19 times straight in a row.
Slowblow - Brothers in arms - The most beautiful cover of Dire Straits you will ever find. It's as slow as a tape recorder made out of lava
S & E - Les Fleurs Sont Des Bonnes Auditrices - Looped ghosts voices from Finland.
múm - the Last shapes of never - I have no choice to put this song on the mix tape, since it is pretty much about drowning in a lake.
Johnny Poo - Tunglið (and reversed) This icelandic child-star/prodigy decided to release this song backwards for some reason. This is the song I use for my alarm clock so I wake up to it every morning. But since it is backwards, I decided to have it twice on the mixtape once backwards and once forwards. It's eery both ways. The title means "the Moon."
Lost in Hildurness - Aether - A beautiful track of our very own Hildurs, or Lost in Hildurness' solo album called Without Sinking. Intense beautiness and her father is even playing clarinet on this track.
Moondog - All is Loneliness - The loneliest song of all time, it's like suddenly going blind and deaf.
Yma Sumac - Magenta Mountain - A majestic vocal landscape-drama by the peruvian princess. Delia Derbyshire & Barry Bermange - Dreams part 4: Sea - This mixtape is has already been going quite creepy on top of being dramatic, so why not go all the way. Delia Derbyshare scored this collage of people describing their dreams of the sea and being underwater, collected and put together by Barry Bermage for the BBC in 1964. What raises my hairs is that for some reason most of these dreams seem to be about drowning. Perry Como - Sunrise Sunset - Why not? Perry Como?
Suicide - Dream baby dream - Well, this is probably the best ending song for any mixtape and will hopefully be the last song I will ever hear.
This should be good to send a few of them '90s crossover-metal shivers down your spine. Shame off the LQ video, but anyone familiar with Senser knows this is going to be ranking highly in his or her's end of the year top-list.
Senser are back with a new album 'How To Do Battle', due for release on October 19 through Imprint Music.
The album will be preceded by a single, entitled 'Resistance Now', due for release on September 14.
The sextet (fronted by co-vocalists Heitham Al-Sayed and Kerstin Haigh) have been a force in music since their 1995 album 'Stacked Up' became a platinum selling album. The new album was produced by Neil McLellan (The Prodigy), Jason Wilcock (The Ghost Of A Thousand, Reuben) and New York hip hop producer Scott Harding (Wu Tang Clan, New Kingdom).
Rock Sound is proud to present the new video for single 'Resistance Now', check it out below:
Returning a favor to Tomas Halberstad for sending me his album The Anger illustrated with 1/6 of a painting. Each country to mail him for it get's one copy, each containing a piece of a painting. The album itself was a breezy piece of energy pumping electronica and vocals that make for a solid combination that went perfect with the heat these days. It grabbed me and got me moving again.
A twenty-six minute electro-acoustic soundtrack to a summers-day is what this Texas outfit offers on their six track EP. Imagine laying on your back in a park, drifting away on the tones of a skilled fingerstyle guitarplayer sitting on a bench improvising on the downtempo electronica from some kid down the street checking out the latest hip Japanese cupboard idm. Add the organic flow of waves caressing - and subtly refracting - a production floating on warm strings and you end up with half an hour of breezy summer bliss. A successful exercise in a genre labeled as electro-acoustic from a band we hope to hear more from in the future.
MGR (Mustard Gas and Roses) - Wavering on the Cresting Heft.
I love MGR; it's slow, it's dark, it's beautiful sadness on vinyl I want to be devoured by at massive volumes...
The sleeve note describes it rather well:
MGR is an emotionally charged amalgamation of sounds that, much to it's credit, refuses to fit neatly into any particular category. MGR's effectiveness stems from how fluidly Mark Gallagher - of renowned dirge architects Isis - is able to gradually add texture upon texture, building up the intensity of the tracks until they reach a tragic momentum. Imagine Isis with much of the bombast stripped away, leaving only dark, moody and melancholic soundscapes...
Read up on my findings of Wavering Radiant here. Both the Isis & MGR albums are released by Conspiracy Records with much love and eye for detail, as always.
There even is a print on the inside of the gatefold sleeve... wow.
Finland. Jazz. Not exactly a combination that was self-evident when I found this assignment in my virtual office tray - Scandinavian neighbors Sweden have a far more notable (fusion) history in this field to my knowledge. But at first listen it becomes rather apparent that the colorful bunch that makes up Black Motor isn't all that intelligible, nor is the brand of jazz they bring on Vaarat Vastukset.
While the sax, drums and upright bass are the base of Black Motor's sound, they've expanded their instrumentation with some of the finer weirdling background-fillers such as strings of bells and chimes, flute, chants and mantras. As a whole, this album is one you're not likely to use when you like a jazzy vibe over Sunday brunch; this album is ideal for the late nights, when the level of Jack Daniels drops under it's label and conversations are limited to a few strenuous "yeahs" (or other states of low brain-activity). As such, Vaarat Vastukset works very well for those experienced in the field of mind-altering music, with its lengthy episodes of krautesque jazz explorations.
Now don't get me wrong, if the jazz department of your collection only contains a Miles Davis collection box and a Best OfJohn Coltrane, this might still push your buttons in the right order. Throughout the album, the experimental jazz approach prevails but still offers mellow resting areas and groovy bits of "drunken rhythms;" one even encounters some parts the listener could hum along with after a few listens. Some of those intermezzos call the soundtrack Baise Moi to mind, or at least the closing four tracks composed by the hand of Jan Varou.
In all, if an experimental three quarters of an hour doesn't scare you off and you can handle your jazz, it is well worth checking out this album. The production is as organic and solid as you'd find it on late sixties- early seventies prog or krautrock albums. I realize that this album can take some effort on the listener's behalf at first, but it gains much in depth once you find your way in Black Motor's sonic universe.
A bolt of lo-fi lightning searches its way through the thick skies and I found myself awakening, not knowing how I got where I was and unable to define my state of being; how could I be sure I was leaving the blissful mantra of silence and deep sleep? I rested my eyes for a few moments and inhaled my surroundings. I remembered an ancient wisdom and, confident in my faith that, however horrific (or redemptive) it might turn out to be, I'd follow the flow of the proverbial river.
The dark tunnel lightened as I confirmed my decision, filling the atmosphere with a dense and ancient graphite glow. Whatever the nature of the forces at work may be, whatever their objective was, I realized that this would be an endeavor where I had no choice but to comply with the unearthed rails ahead. My vessel reminded me of Blaine the Mono, and my surroundings confirmed this hypothesis. Waves of landscapes that once were stunning - but at the time of my passing were no more than victims of time that moved on - drew themselves past the windows of my mute railroad companion who needed to focus on the screeching of the rusty rails.
"Grave Robbing in Texas"
A shift in the speed told me that soon I had to leave the crazed people-carrier I had become accustomed to. Tension rose as my schizophrenic means of transportation came to a halt. As Blaine rested, I was lured in the direction of the dark, trembling monotone voice hiding in ambient space; the only distinct feature in the darkened surroundings I could make out. Drawn by the far-off wailing ghosts of haunted monks, I found my way to their grave and took in their omnipresent vibrations. They tested me as much as they could, cleansing the mind with the abundance of dark drones that spawned out of unrecognizable and untraceable sources.
"Dark Country Road"
The "Grave Robbing in Texas" had taken a lot out of me; in fact, the past eight minutes had been quite an ordeal at their most intense moments. I doubted that the deafening silence was a sign that I had completed my mysterious trip, so I examined my options to avoid my new-found status of Chinese volunteer.
The evaluation of my options was suddenly solved by the distant swelling of familiar sound of diminishing metal on corroding iron, aided by layers of soft droning ambient. I panicked, as I knew that the easiest (and perhaps only) way out of this silent madness was on that psychotic train that had such a prominent place in a book I so fondly read in my childhood and adolescence. I pulled myself out of my still state and rushed back, hoping I'd be able to catch him. Despite my effort, I had no choice but to proceed on foot. The sound of Blaine's friction began to fade away in the night as I followed the obscured road, which I could only assume was leading where I had to go.
"On Perdition Hill"
I'd been walking through the statically-charged silent surroundings for some time before Perdition Hill loomed out of the sonic scenery. I worked myself to the summit, hoping I'd be able to give my journey a direction, and as I took in the more prolific soundscapes, I was able to recognize some form of civilization in a city that I could only assume that it once was (or would be) Lud. As I gazed over its form, I realized that my interpretations were fueled by my desire to escape a "real" world that made even less sense to me than this fictional place. I decided to continue, as I had come this far already, and maybe there was redemption to be found down there.
"Slow Motion Prayer Circle"
As I descended towards the abandoned city, its rumbling faded and made way for yet another ephemeral entity. I stopped in the midst of an open area, illuminated by a rock formation where the Celts would be jealous of - massive pillars forced the charging winds to break and form an audible play of siren-like chants, hypnotizing me. They seemed to want to break off my journey, to force me to give up and enjoy their eternal, shapeshifting song until I'd dissolve into them. I pulled myself away from the soothing loops and went down the path towards Lud, entering the final stage of my endeavor.
"The Ghosts of Eden Trail"
I found my way to the final frontier and let the familiar, yet somehow richer ambient of this place soak in, anticipating a means to end this journey, one that would make the tale complete. I wandered around for a while, finding nothing but the repetitive, fluctuating beauty of cascading strings. All of a sudden, I recognized my former companion in the distance, coming to a raucous halt under this lost city. Blaine was waiting for me nearby, and I felt joy come over me as I remembered another ancient teaching; it was not the destination that was important, but the journey itself. This one offered many stunning sights, sounds and experiences - I had forgotten my ways when I had been waiting for a climax, and I must atone for my recklessness. Trembling, I caressed Blaine's shell, thanking him for letting me find my way again, and then boarded while I wondered what forgotten world I'd envision the next time I hit the play button.
William Fowler Collins's first release on Type Records (and second overall) tastes like the dark and cinematic ambient of labelmate Xela, and is right in place in the respectable list of artists who signed on this prolific label. This San Fransico based artist tells audible tales with a dark and organized structure that'll evoke visions of abandoned wastelands where scavengers are patiently waiting for their prey. Recommended if you like cinematic dark ambient with an intelligent approach, music that takes its time to evolve without using massive droning forces just for the sake of it.
Within the post-rock-encompassing skies of this four track EP, the listener finds herself confronted with the instrumental quintet Ender, who slaves over the most popular of instruments (guitar, bass and drum) to produce a self-titled audible calling-card. The album is made up of moody, yet powerful post-rock shrouded in a haze of gritty ambient. Imagine an cardboard egg-box branded "post-rock," filled with eleven battery-laid eggs and one odd-looking kiwi. Ender stands out just like that kiwi, with the familiar post-rock form, but without the clinical approach taken by so many others.
Like most of their Pacific colleagues, Ender knows how to manipulate the space and ambiance needed for their compositions to flourish and gradually evolve. The combined destructive weight of rhythm guitars and drums in the form of dragging riffs arch the elaborated structure that spans over the whole release. The introspective waves of evolving ambient and stacks of heavy hypnotic hooks are good for forty-two minutes of dark, enticing variations and a few spine-shivering moments, but never seem to deploy their full potential. Near the end of Ender, the band trades in their most heavy weight guitar sound for a piano, and tips the scale in favor of the conformist form.
Once the piano finds it's place in the closing composition, Ender brings it home with a less powerful but more subtle and emotional undertone. Without the drive - one that reminds the listener of European post-metal bands - of Ender's opening, the whole gives the impression that this is still not the best possible result. Their strength lies as much in esoteric explorations as in latent aggression, but I, for one, believe that the latter one - given some more attention - has a few interesting options to strengthen the whole.
Adding a few (distant) vocal accents would expose a more captivating, emotional side of their sound and thus engage the listener even more. At a certain point in "Track 2", the deep combined sound of the bass and guitar triggered a memory of a dirty-sounding Celtic Frost vocal line, fueling the dark tones of that dangerously fierce cloud-formation and accentuating the beauty of the redeeming matte light found in the ambiance. For obvious reasons, Tom Gabriel Fischer's vocals - or vocals in general - will not be the perfect solution to allow Ender to rise above the level of this EP, but if the outfit's drummer could batter their grayish blob of expressions with more depth and edge, they could have a decent shot at knocking me out of my socks. Perhaps then a reference to the hypnotic stoner doom slabs of Windmills By The Ocean is in order.
Blurping on Isis' latest in the Release of the Month article at TSB.
After their 10 year jubilee and related vinyl box re-releases, a Seldon Hunt documentary and a whole lot of patience and speculation, Isis astonished fan and foe alike with an album that recapitulated and expanded upon their decade of unique post-metal. Unlike its predecessors, Wavering Radiant revisits the strong points of a strong career, from Celestial to In the Absence of Truth, rather than building on the work of a single album. A more notable place is reserved for haunting vocals, while sturdy bass and subtle, supportive soundscapes (containing Rhodes-like accents) carry the weight of the sometimes uplifting, sometimes destructive guitars. Isis’ eye for detail and the progressive nature of this album makes it their most complete and refined work to date: a standout album in their already impressive catalogue as well as in the progressive post-metal genre itself. full article
after re-listening this album I came across the making of the packaging, which I unfortunately don't own... the album does sound like the package looks. Excellent...
Accompanying Dinner's release of Disco Rock on the Japanese label Fantome Records is its predecessor, And... Hearing Things. Notable about the re-release of the 2007 album are the two closing tracks that have been "re-ordered" and offer some form of compensation to the seemingly DIY sound of the entire production of the initial release. DIY doesn't mean that it sounds like a recording with a tapedeck in a rehearsal room, but rather that the minimal effort during the recording and finishing of the album doesn't do much justice to the virtuosity that is to be discovered. And virtuosity is plentiful with Dinner.
The band's effort results in playful indie and post-rock with a rhythmic hint of funk and groove that make up an upbeat, almost psychedelic, instrumental rock variant. Soothingly opening the release is "#Zero", featuring laid-back acoustic guitar plucks and (what appears to be) a set of spoons. This leads the listener into the frenzied drumming and bass lines of "#", where subtle guitar chords struggle for their place in the "question and answer" structure, sometimes ending up with a few surprising hooks and bridges. After this swirling introduction of the album, the tracks take on a more flattened-out structure which tends to endanger the apex of the release. The strictly necessary room for essential breaks and fills is barely respected, and sometimes even seem to confuse the artists themselves at certain points, with the result that some of the staccato accents feel more like mellow speed bumps messing up the ride.
The strongest parts of And... Hearing Things are the down tempo, breezy tracks like "Six-Seven-8" that gradually evolve and climax, proving that skilled instrumental work and well-written structures are within Dinner's capabilities. Nevertheless, there is still some work in finding the less awkward sounding structures and the right sonic environment for every particular instrument. Every now and then, some spaced-out pads come into play to fill the background, something that I would've liked to hear more. By doing so, they could easily drop one of the leading rhythm guitars, providing some more depth in the general guitar sound, and strengthening the fragile backbone of Dinner's sound. In the end, the album is a debut by a young and obscure band, so hopefully they'll have the means to fine-tune their music as they go along.
The two closing (re-ordered) tracks of the album offer an audible insight in the produced direction Dinner should explore in my opinion. Unlike their ten two-dimensional cardboard predecessors, these closing tracks have a new-found depth and liveliness, unleashed through the simple application of some effects and mastering. The finishing touch is a bit rough around the edges, but a comparison to Rovo (minus strings) is not too far-fetched on this band filled to the rim with potential...
blurping on the Release of the Month: March 2009 article at The Silent Ballet... which was a strange month.
The divine Edgar Allen Poe once stated that when one is confronted with a vast amount of impressions screaming for our attention – like signboards with adverts – one tends to block out those that are (too) obvious. The mind sometimes works in mysterious ways, and in a month filled with great releases, mine kept wandering back to this Romanian collision of ambient post-rock and math rock. Semiosis is the combined effort of breakcore artist Candlestickmaker and Serban Ilicevici. On their maiden release, Pictural, they offer seven enjoyable tracks ranging from soothing ambient pieces to adrenaline pumping post-metal. Razor-sharp IDM and occasional bombastic drum samples lift the dreamy instrumental rock to epic sonic climaxes in this solid and sometimes surprising production. (Could the theremin be the new glockenspiel?) An ideal album to erase the memory of a gloomy winter and to make way for the uplifting melancholy of a spring dawn.
The album is available for free download here by the good people of Asiluum.com as well as a physical copy, but you can find out about artsy attached strings at the download page.
A feature-length documentary film about hip-hop DJing, otherwise known as turntablism. From the South Bronx in the 1970s to San Francisco now, the world's best scratchers, beat-diggers, party-rockers, and producers wax poetic on beats, breaks, battles, and the infinite possibilities of vinyl. -imdb
It's simple really, this documentary is as essential as essential can get when it comes to hip-hop. A step by step walk-through of how it all began with dj-ing and evolved into scratching, juggling, turntablism etc. Passing through with insight, anecdotes, tips and tricks or general BS are oa.: Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Krush, Mix Master Mike, DJ NuMark, DJ Q-Bert, DJ Shadow, X-ecutioners, Steinski, Cut Chemist, ... The feature won the audience price at the Atlanta Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Price at Sundance, so you know this is a decent documentary and not just a collection of home shot clips, it just looks real good too, just check the first few minutes below..
Ambient, avant-garde, soundscape, post-industrial: four labels that are perfectly applicable to Minenhund. But there is something more to this release than what you'd expect from an album that is bound to be categorized in these niches. A quick glance at Strotter Inst.'s gallery proves that we're not dealing with something that can be classified so easily under such a general musical denominator. Sure, the result of this remarkable Swiss-based sound architecture is an album, but the manner in which the audio is created reminds more of conceptual art. A dark audible mind trip lies ahead for those who do not fear taking a leap into a sonic universe made out of molested vinyl and rebuilt turntables.
My advised setting to take in this hour of charcoal soundbites is absolute darkness and a set of headphones with the volume set just beyond the point that is considered healthy for your hearing. Minenhund translates (freely) as a person who spends his days slaving in the depts of pitch dark mines, so if you have the chance to replicate these conditions in any way, please do so.
The most noticeable thing about Christoph Hess' latest effort as Strotter Inst. is the focus on the use of the turntable as sound creating device rather than as a sound reproducing one. Five Lenco turntables make up the main part of the instrumentation/installation; modified styluses, rubber bands, duct tape and whatnot are used to create the meditative bass and looping rhythms. The consistency of the cascading loops forms the stomping engine that guarantee the blood flowing in the maze of pseudo-industrial rhythm patterns. The novelty of this release is the actual use of a few samples in the form of French gibberish - sometimes awkwardly high-pitched like there was a helium leak in one of the underground chambers of the sonic mine. Some cuts from a marching vinyl (that seem to be slightly out of place in the big picture) serve as a welcome change in the confined sound spectrum that has an overall fatness to it provided by the analog warmth residing in the vintage parts of the installation.
Strotter Inst. managed to combine some noticeable features of fellow sound-explorer Philip Jeck and audible tale creators Xela on this release, and ended up with an epic journey from a dusty surface to mind numbing, almost claustrophobic, depths where one thing is sure - if the listener manages to make it to the end of this challenging ride, she'll be counting down to the next shift of crawling through the rumbling darkness of neo-turntablism.
