Month: December 2016 (Page 5 of 8)

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p.s. Hey. I’m away from Paris and the blog today doing some early work on Zac Farley’s and my new film. I decided to give you this long dead Xmas post to get you through. Why, I don’t know. See you tomorrow.

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Dedekind Cut
Benoît Pioulard
Kill Alters
Jay Daniel
The Caretaker
Crying
Eli Keszler
Helm
Jung An Tagen
pinkcourtesyphone
Bisk
MX-80 Sound
Lorenzo Senni
Oliver Coates
Slapp Happy
Henry Cow
Bully Fae
The Limiñanas

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E Great Light
‘Thalia Zedek has one of the most enduring and distinctive voices in modern rock music — a voice like no other — that can be heard in her work with some of the most groundbreaking underground bands, from Uzi and Live Skull to Come. Since 2001, Zedek has been making music under her own name, releasing a string of critically acclaimed albums. Thirty years in, Zedek is as active as she has ever been. She recently started the new rock band E with Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune) and Gavin McCarthy (Karate).’ — Thrill Jockey

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Dedekind Cut Fear in Reverse
‘Squarely speaking a “drone album,” it would be wrong to speak of $uccessor without mentioning the baggage with which it slogs along from various stops in grime, plunderphonics, and New Age. “Maxine” incorporates the same synth string and vocal samples as most of Oneohtrix Point Never’s now-treasured vapor classic R Plus Seven, though the point doesn’t seem to be pastiche, but rather a lushly shallow, shallowly lush space of reprieve. Where the aptly titled “Conversations with angels” kind of barely happens, suspended like a wind chime caught in a tape loop, other cuts like opener “Descend from now” happen like hell, sharpening distant crescendos into bubbling, airy leads and strings.’ — Will Neibergall

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Benoît Pioulard Anchor as the Muse
‘The peculiar title of Benoît Pioulard’s latest album gives the impression that it could be some kind of best-of collection. It isn’t, but The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter could stand in as a succinct summation of Thomas Meluch’s charismatic melding of dream-folk, field recordings, and sandwashed atmospheres. The completion of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter has been trailed by poignant timing and tragic coincidence. Meluch’s first album for Kranky, Précis, was released ten years earlier, nearly to the day. His brother, for whom the record is dedicated, passed away on the same day that it was finished. Listening Matter’s mood is not easily read. Its pleasure and melancholy are both wary. Meluch being a photographer as well, several of his Polaroids serve as the album art. There’s surely some reflection of the music to be drawn from the cover image; a fish eye mirror on a dark weathered wall, offering a detached and bent view of a beautiful day.’ — Pop Matters

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Kill Alters D20
‘Bonnie Baxter is a New York musician who has thus far been best known for her moody electronic pop project Shadowbox, but she’s lately taken a very dark turn with her newer project Kill Alters. Their debut tape, released by Godmode, is a raw, almost traumatizing listen—clear touchstones include but are not limited to industrial, glitch, and harsh noise—and the project’s sounds and images are largely culled from audio and video tapes recorded over the course of decades by Baxter’s mother.’ — Dangerous Minds

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Jay Daniel $hake It Down
‘The tools Daniel uses to create are relatively simple: lots of acoustic percussion instruments, various keyboards and synths, a tried and tested Akai drum machine, a couple of samples and loops (tasteful, secret) and, most importantly, a clear sense of history. Broken Knowz is rhythmically and emotionally astute in the way lots of Detroit’s great electronic music is: not loud, forceful or brashly innovative (though plenty fits that bill in the 313, too), but with quiet comfort in its creative tensions. The tensions form the music’s soul, and on Broken Knowz, Daniel has post-techno soul to burn.’ — npr

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The Caretaker Childishly Fresh Eyes
‘Embarking on the Caretaker’s final journey with his first release in four years, Everywhere At The End of Time sets off with the familiar vernacular of abraded shellac 78s and their ghostly waltzes to emulate the entropic effect of a mind becoming detached from everyone else’s sense of reality and coming to terms with their own, altered, and ever more elusive sense of ontology. The series aims to enlighten our understanding of dementia by breaking it down into a series of stages that provide a haunting guide to its progression, deterioration and disintegration and the way that people experience it according to a range of impending factors. In other words, Everywhere At The End of Time probes some of the most important questions about modern music’s place in a world that’s increasingly haunted or even choked by the tightening noose of feedback loops of influence; perceptibly questioning the value of old memories as opposed to the creation of new ones, and, likewise the fidelity of those musical memories which remain, and whether we can properly recollect them from the mire of our faulty memory banks without the luxury of choice.’ — boomkat

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Crying Premonitory Dream
‘The bittersweet truth about music this overpowering and rich is that I can’t honestly tell you if I’m still going to be listening to it in a year. Pop fades like all things, and we seem to consume (and dispose of) music more ravenously now than before. Time shapes us and changes us, and we can’t always take the things we used to love with us as we step forward into the unknown. But Beyond the Fleeting Gales is a reminder of that urgency that we need in music, that need to feel both powerful and fragile at once, to thrash ourselves to the beat of a song with the full knowledge that soon it will all be over. It’s pop music at its most all-encompassing, dripping with earnest feeling that doesn’t feel forced, but rather constructive and undemanding. Beyond the Fleeting Gales is a genuine and unpretentious promise from Crying that they are here, and so are we, and together we can save the world, even if it’s just for a moment.’ — Sam Goldner

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Eli Keszler & Helm Boiler Room Live Show
‘Some pretty enthralling live sound manipulation taking place between PAN’s Helm and Eli Keszler: serious virtuoso drumming fed through analogue gear.’ — Boiler Room

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Jung An Tagen Das Fest Der Reichen & Zweite Schicht
‘Jung An Tagen is the primary music act operating inside the Virtual Institute Vienna. 
By using substractive synthesis and sampling techniques Jung An Tagen builds aleatoric arrays, repetitive figures & polyrhythmic moirés circulating around distinctive timbres and haptic fragments, resulting in a vision of morphing movements between high energy and zero gravity states. 
Due to the synaesthesian nature of the VIV, Jung An Tagen is bound very closely to a specific visual grammar and is intertwined with video art, even though the performative settings are usually reduced to music only.’ — Editions Mego

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pinkcourtesyphone New Domestic Landscape
‘The ongoing project by Los Angeles-based sound artist Richard Chartier (b.1971) sends you a new coded message of sumptuous distant drones and glacial orchestral heartrendings. Poised and polished slow motion pulsations tug at your emotions (but only a portion of them). For those listeners desirous of the output of The Caretaker, Angelo Badalamenti, William Basinski, and other such dark wistful wonderment. Pinkcourtesyphone is dark but not arch, with a slight hint of humor. Amorphous, changing, and slipping in and out of consciousness, operating like a syrup-y dream and strives to be both elegant and detached.’ — Editions Mego

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Bisk Slippin’
‘Frankly, there are few details regarding Bisk’s background that are yet made available to the public. We hear he’s from Walthamstow, in his early twenties and that he made Don’t Piss It Off! over the summer just gone. His rhymes have implied that he was previously incarcerated. Stinkin Slumrok claimed they were friends in school during an interview with Bearded Magazine. From the beginning, ‘Don’t Piss It Off’ is an eery listening experience. This is partly due to the disconcerting, enigmatic nature of Bisk’s rhymes, but mainly because of the dark, brooding instrumentation Formz used throughout the projects 12 track entirety. A diabolical mixture of rhythmic jazz chords and headbanging boombap tempos, the project is a demonstration of Formz’s productive abilities as much as it exemplifies Bisks lyrical finesse.’ — WORDPLAY

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MX-80 Sound Uh Oh
‘An entire genre of music might be called “hidden-treasure rock” and it would be made up of those bands that, when you stumble upon their albums in record store racks, you feel like you’ve won a prize. MX-80 Sound is the epitome of this idea. Their albums are the kind you pull from the stacks and ask your friends if they own anything by them, “because you should.” Julian Cope once wrote that he “suspected” MX-80 Sound was a main influence on bands like noise-rock luminaries Sonic Youth, and one can hear where he’s coming from by sampling any of their first three albums — 1977’s Hard Attack, 1980’s Out Of The Tunnel and 1981’s Crowd Control. All three overflow with off-kilter melodies, scorching, angular guitar riffs and trance-inducing rhythms, creating the kind of arty, guitar-heavy noise that would find its way onto radio waves under the “alternative rock” banner years later.’ — KQED

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Lorenzo Senni Win In The Flat World
‘Senni finds all the thematic material he needs in one of electronic music’s most maligned genres: trance. His early albums were forays into glitch and ambient, but with trance, Senni sought the ecstatic in isolating that music’s builds and breakdowns. He excludes the elements where most listeners would find pleasure centers of such music, in its bass and drums. Like Heatsick with his Casio and Aphex Twin’s own rabbit hole plunge with the Cheetah MS800, Senni maniacally deploys but one keyboard for all of his sounds, the Roland JP8000. As he told Fact last year, “if I had to approach trance music, I had to have that synthesizer.”’ — Andy Beta

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Oliver Coates ‘Love’, by Mica Levi
‘Oliver Coates mixes things up. A fine classical cellist who collaborates with Jonny Greenwood and Massive Attack, who reworks music by Squarepusher and Boards of Canada, his website lists Pierre Boulez next to MF Doom. He’s of a generation of composers and performers whose horizons take in indie, electronica and folk as well as contemporary classical music, all of which chimes happily for those of us whose listening habits do the same.’ — The Guardian

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Slapp Happy & Henry Cow A Worm Is At Work
‘Desperate Straights, a collaboration with British avant-prog band Henry Cow, was Slapp Happy’s third official LP. The band’s first record, Sort Of, had been completed with assistance from Faust, while their second, self-titled album (later released as Casablanca Moon), was originally recorded for Polydor but then scrapped and re-recorded when the band signed to Virgin. Those first two Slapp Happy records were soft pop for eccentrics, informed by British Invasion rock, Dylan, and hints of European cafe music. Desperate Straights was a slightly different story. Though “pop” in a basic sense, its songs were more closely related to Weill and classical art-song than contemporary pop. But don’t get the wrong idea: Although Henry Cow members Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, John Greaves, and Tim Hodgkinson contribute greatly to the baroque sound of the record, Moore and Blegvad’s songwriting steal the show.’ — Dominique Leone

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Bully Fae Elevator Pitch
‘Bully Fae is a musical act comprised of stand-up comedy, poetry, dance, and music, that tells a story about abjection, seduction, addiction, and queerness. The project began as an accident. Inspired by an urgency to document ideas in real time, I bought a voice recorder with the intention of describing my thoughts on art and my plans to make it. As I began my auto-dictation process of talking while walking, my interest in this device evolved; it’s musicality i.e. the meter of words and the beat of my steps composed what sounded more like song or poetry than marginal commentary. This method of making became my dominant method. It is the construction site for language that informs an interdisciplinary practice; a way to design performance without a predetermined mission and a receptacle for emotional waste products. Bully Fae’s incantations conjure images of prosthetic limbs locking themselves into a system, being burned alive by an audience, being possessed by performance, and becoming incorporeal. The music itself is experimental electronic beats. They are composed with everyday noise, percussion, and cinematic effects and are arranged to syncopate under my locomotive chatter/rapping/reading to create an uncanny symmetry. The title “Defy A Thing To Be” comes from a poem by a friend, Amanda Horowitz, and captures perfectly the myriad spirit of the project.’ — BF

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The Limiñanas Dahlia Rouge
‘The Limiñanas are like a French Raveonettes in a way – only with Gainsbourg and Suicide/Stooges as main influences instead of the Ronettes and Buddy Holly. Or maybe a Stereolab in scuffed cowboy-boots and dressed all-in-black, playing a Franco-American motorik, Serge with Marty Rev…. well, kinda…. They’ve been around since 2009 and this is fourth proper album. Half-spoken/half/sung vocals, some male, others female, some in French, some in English. This really is a beautiful, faultless album if you like French pop and sunglasses-after-dark cool.’ — Louder than War

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p.s. Hey. A heads up that I won’t be here tomorrow. Well, technically I will be in the form of a resurrected post from my old, murdered blog, but there won’t be the usual talky p.s. The reason is that Zac and I are training away from Paris to Bas Normandie to do an initial day of location scouting for our new film. But please feel free to comment and stuff today and tomorrow because I’ll be back in full with a new post and a catch-up p.s. on Thursday. ** H, And good morning to you. Yes, I’ll try to find those scrapbook posts and see if I still have the materials to restore them. My favorite Angers are, hm, probably ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ and ‘Kustom Kar Kommandos’. Thanks about the scissors. It was fun putting it together. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Yes, my roommate is talking with the bank to see how it can be done today. Kris Kidd’s stuff does look very intriguing. Huh. I’ll do a rangy search for his videos and things today. Cool, thank you! Yes, I’m very happy to say that my old friend is very into reconnecting and catching up! I’m quite excited! We’re going to figure out a Skype talk this week. He’s in California. Also, he knew my dear late friend and muse George Miles as we were all good friends back then, and I’ve been wanting very, very much for years to talk with someone who knew George since I’ve lost touch with everyone who did. That’s momentous too. So, yes, it’s all very happy-making. My yesterday didn’t go as planned either because fiber optic cable was being installed in Zac’s apartment building so the residents there can finally have fast internet, and I guess that process took eight hours, so we’re meeting to go over the script this morning instead, and yesterday I just worked and did email and stuff, nothing momentous. I hope everything is okay with your grandparents. And I’m glad you at least got to work on your scrapbooks. That’s big. Did today work out well for you? It’s freezing cold and raining violently here, but I’ll figure something out. ** David Ehrenstein, I wish! ** Kyler, Hi. Well, yeah, if you’re going to do something, do it, or something like that, I reckon. I’ve never actually walked on rue des Ciseaux. Huh. I really should. When it stops raining. ** Steevee, Ah, your ‘Roma’ review, excellent, I’ve been looking forward to that. Everyone, Fellini’s awesome film ‘Roma’ has been restored and released on Blu-Ray, and Steevee has written about it, and that’s your cue to click. ** _Black_Acrylic, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, ‘À l’intérieur’s’ directors, have ‘Leatherface’, a ‘Texas Chainsaw’ prequel with Lili Taylor upcoming. I’m curious. ** TomK, I can’t cut in a straight line either. There are people who can? You might have just explained my retreat into the written word too. Yes, my old friend wants to reconnect! I’m very happy! I’ve had Deleuze here and there in posts not specifically about him, but never in the spotlight. I would dearly love and treasure a Deleuze post, if you want to make one. Would be great! Thanks for the proposal, Tom. ** Jamie, Je mais! That’s French for ‘but I’. Hey, buddy. It was with you that I began mulling over doing a scissors post, and, gosh darn it if I didn’t end up doing that! For better or worse. I’ve been good. Working, low-keyish otherwise. The apartment hunt is ongoing. I have to set up a French bank account to be able to rent a place, and that’s a snag that I’m trying get through at the moment before the hunt continues. I’m so sorry you’ve been bluesy, even though I like that word. I hope your exciting meeting today breaks the spell. Oh my God, you can bet I’m interested in Chocolate Happyland, and I know nothing about it, so at least much of today is now scheduled out as I madly search the internet for all traces of it. Wow. I’m liking the winter a lot, although today winter is being drowned in a heavy rainstorm, and I’m not completely wild about that. Tell me about the meeting and everything else, if you don’t mind. Lots of love right back to you ** Joakim, Hi, Joakim! Oh, there’s something sad to me that Emo has gotten to the point where it’s a subject of costume parties, but such is progress. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a real Emo in Paris. There used to be squads of them. Okay, that photo of the pre-Emo party lunch is so great that, ultimately, I guess it’s okay that Emo has largely become a thing confined to lonely small town kids. Such style! Everyone in that photo looks good enough to eat! I don’t know what an orbital piercing is, but that term is very cool, and I’ll find out. Oh, wow, thank you so much for the offer of a flat! That could really help. I’m seeing Zac in about an hour, and I’ll mention that. We love Bon Bon Land. You must go! The park’s nasty cartoon character thematic is really fun, and they have some excellent, quite unique rides. If nothing else, Zac and I will drag you there whenever we come up. Oh, have you ever met or come across Paul Hameline? He’s in Zac’s and my film, and he has become this kind of giant fashion model/’it’ boy since then. He used to go to Copenhagen a lot, and I told him to watch out for you because you guys should meet. He’s awesome. I don’t know if he still spends a lot of time there. It’s wonderful for me too to have you here and get to talk. It’s a serious boon, my friend. Have a lovely today and tomorrow. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, but it didn’t get nominated yestertday for a Golden Globe, so how good can it be? I do like the Jesus and Mary Chain. ‘Psychocandy’ is up amongst my all time very favorite records. And I like ‘Automatic’ too, yes. They’re putting out a new album, as you might know. I’m kind of wary of that. I’m glad I didn’t include Scissors Sisters too. I can’t stand them, and they were swarming every scissors search I made, yuck. Glad LPS is on his feet, and just in time! ** Morgan M Page, Hi, Morgan! You must be happy to be at the finals point of schooling. When I was a kid, my parents did not at all like that I wanted to be an artist. They wanted me to do something seriously money-making. So they forced me to take a test based on my aptitude that would supposedly tell me what profession I was meant to go into. I think they were hoping for, you know, lawyer or doctor or something. But the test said that the profession I should go into was social work. After that they gave up and let me become an artist, ha ha. Well, tomorrow we’re officially starting the film work by location scouting. So, it has begun, and my next months will be heavily occupied with the preparations. Have a fine day! ** B, Hi, man. Ha, I’m glad the post accidentally hit the spot. I’m so sorry about the break up. That stuff is so hard even in the best of circumnstances, But I’m glad you’re back into enjoying and planning the future. That event in Astoria sounds cool. Tell me more about it when the time comes, if you don’t mind. I am a great fan of Agnes Martin and Kerry James Marshall. I saw the Agnes Martin retrospective when it was at the Tate in London, and it was sublime, and I caught the Kerry James Marshall show at the Met Breuer when I was in NYC last, and it was fantastic. I look forward to your review! Thanks! Everyone, B has reviewed he retrospectives of the great artists Agnes Martin an Kerry James Marshal that are currently up in NYC, and I highly recommend that you check in on his always greatly interesting thoughts. Here. I hope you like the Meredith Alling book. I’m good, really busy, as usual, I guess, but with with very welcome things., Take care, buddy. ** Chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Thanks, man. Yeah, blog post making is definitely fun. A ton of work, but it’s so educational. It’s like home schooling or something. Ha ha, ‘i will rape you with scissors’ in IMAX 3D, totally. Thanks for the vine. It looks insane at a glance, and I’ll absorb it in a sec. Everyone, chris dankland contributes Snip Snip Hoe to the Scissors Day, and the Day isn’t over until you include his contribution. You’ll see why. No, I don’t think I’m going to decorate for Xmas, Mostly because I’m in the process of having to move, and it makes me sad, and I think if I put love into this place that I’m going to miss so much, it’ll just up the sadness. Have a super swell day! ** Right, I made you a concert of some music and visuals in some cases. I hope you will attend. It’s a good show. Like I said, the blog will see you tomorrow, and I will see you on Thursday.