Gig #54: Of late 6: Shackleton, Beatriz Ferreyra, Wild Beasts, Sculpture, Flower Orgy, Thou, Compact Disk Dummies, Vår, Giant Swan, Gnod, Age Coin, Bee Mask, Yan Jun

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Shackleton Freezing Opening Thawing
‘Every Sam Shackleton release is an event because only he can make music like this. Anyone who’s seen Shackleton play live recently won’t be surprised by the bright timbres of “Freezing Opening Thawing.” The 11-minute title track takes the chintzy instrumentation of The Drawbar Organ and builds on the idea, daubing his signature basslines with staccato mallet melodies. It’s less ritualistic and more psychedelic than before, charging forward with an aggression that also feels new, not quite the sprawl of his more recent work nor the loopy madness of his oldest material. But most striking of all is his new EP’s artificiality. The release is said to place a newfound emphasis on synthesis rather than sampling, and each track is layered with glowing space-age sounds.’ — Resident Advisor

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Beatriz Ferreyra + Christine Groult live @ Gaite Lyrique
‘Beatriz Ferreyra was born 21 June 1937 in Córdoba, Argentina. She studied piano with Celia Bronstein in Buenos Aires (1950-1956), harmony and musicalanalysis with Nadia Boulanger (1962), electroacoustic music with EdgardoCanton (1963), and composition with EarleBrown and György Ligeti (1967). Between 1963 and 1970, she worked in the research department of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), participating in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer. Since 1970, she has been working as a freelance composer.’ — Computer Music Journal

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Wild Beasts Sweet Spot
‘Much has been made of Wanderlust, the song that opens Wild Beasts’ fourth album, and its vicious disdain for the musical peers who have become Americanised: “In your mother tongue, what’s the verb ‘to suck’?” spits Hayden Thorpe, coming as close to a snarl as that soft falsetto possibly can. At first the intention seems plain: as on their previous three albums, there is no pretence of fitting in. Wild Beasts revel in their idiosyncrasies; you can hear it in the duelling vocals and choral layers, the words that shouldn’t fit, the tunes that veer off in unexpected directions. What’s new here is that they have tempered and honed those flourishes. It’s modest in its experiments, never forgoing an accessible ear for the sake of being difficult. Sweet Spot is typically ugly-beautiful, its crystalline vocals splattered with a thick 80s synth, while Nature Boy rumbles with delicious spite and menace: “Your only joy, your only bliss, your lady wife around his lips”.’ — The Observer

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Sculpture Plastic Infinite
‘Plastic Infinite is a 7″ animated picture disc by UK-based duo Sculpture made to accompany a new track by the same name. Created like a zoetrope, the disc animates when played under a strobe light or filmed at 25fps. Comprised of duo Reuben Sutherland and Dan Hayhurst, Sculpture’s Plastic Infinite is an extension of their 2011 video for “Elk Cloner” and sees the duo push the limits of the zoetrope form, which has become short hand for particularly lavish limited edition releases.’ — thevinylfactory

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Flower Orgy Stranded
‘Brooklyn’s Flower Orgy consists of three females and one male, and reside in Brooklyn’s peninsular Red Hook neighborhood, which is actually shaped like a hook. Mixing throw back folk songwriting with a modern DIY psych vibe Nate Luce and company craft the kind of tunes that will make that next road trip really make sense. The band’s tunes reside in present day Brooklyn but remind us of our future selves.’ — collaged

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Thou Free Will
‘Within a genre that prides itself on theatricality, Thou’s lack of pretension and their commitment to the DIY world from where they came is refreshing. The band refuses to hide behind elaborate stage shows or tour laminates, releases boatloads of new material every year, and still prefers to pile into their beat-up red van and play all-ages DIY spaces. “Free Will”, is ominous and somber, building in intensity over the course of nearly 15 minutes and neatly exemplifying what’s so compelling about Thou’s trance-inducing chords and tense, ultimately cathartic crescendos. Vocalist Bryan Funck’s near-feral howl commands and chastises, laying out the album’s themes of power, despair, defiance, and free will. His delivery may verge upon black metal in its throat-scraping mania, but the words he speaks are grounded in crushing reality, not fantasy. The demons he confronts are real.’ — Kim Kelly

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Compact Disk Dummies Britney Spears’s Toxic
‘Compact Disk Dummies is a Belgian electropunk-duo, consisting of two very young brothers (Lennert & Janus Coorevits, °1993 & 1995) who are in love with experiment, pounding basslines and shouting guitars. They started in 2010, and in the same year, they already won ‘Music Live’ and ‘Kunstbende’. After having played a lot of gigs, Compact Disk Dummies have become an experienced band with a strong live-reputation, which lets no human being able to stand still. That’s exactly what the jury of Humo’s Rock Rally thought, because in 2012 they won the finals!’ — collaged

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Vår At War For Youth
‘When Vår’s music was first turned loose on the world a year ago it was under the banner War. The name suited the music: “Brodermordet” (“Fractricide”) was horrific, ugly, distorted and twisted to breaking point. At best it sounded like a recording of a punk gig recorded on binaural mics at floor level somewhere in the carpark; a conflict between harmonics and distortion where the distortion played dirty. Not a great surprise that War—later Vår (“Spring”)—was the project of two players in the Danish punk scene, a locus of bands in Copenhagen who blew up in 2011, Loke Rahbek of Sexdrome and Elias Bender Rønnenfelt of Iceage. They broke up amidst a raucous Japanese tour in February 2014.’ — collaged

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Giant Swan Did They Play Dogs?
‘Giant Swan were first up, a duo plying a lush clamour of harsh ear schisms that materialised into gristlised rhythms, a lot of box teased goodness to soak up. These boys certainly knew a thing or two about the art of bending circuitry. Loops and pick-up burrs literally ear danced in textural plugholes of echoed vox, resurrected in scars and sycamore incisions that wavered from slithering invisible points, suggestions of words playing in your inner ear.’ — FREQ

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Gnod The Somnambulist’s Tale, Pt. III
‘There’s a real whiff of rural menace emanating from Gnod. But that isn’t to say the band are rooted, or even earthbound, in any sense of those words. Although operating out of Islington Mill in Salford, everything about the music the band make seems in permanent flux, in search of extreme moments of joy or abasement, whichever comes first. Is it the lost knowledge of the Gnostics, the magic of the ancient world, expelled from the human mind but now seeping back into consciousness through the primal and feral frequencies employed by the band? Or are they simply a devastating calibration of good ale, savage drugs and a brutal sound system? The Somnambulist’s Tale is full of weird and beautiful moments – a terrible beauty, perhaps. The same basic percussive rhythm is at the core of both tracks, occasionally altering in tempo and sporadically dropping out to allow Salford Tom’s chatter to filter through. The synths shimmer and hover in a slightly uneasy equipoise; the two tracks are seemingly sliced and spliced back together, but the whole thing blends into one seamless mélange of chatter and rhythm, a quiet clamor.’ — The Quietus

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Age Coin Untitled
‘Copenhagen’s darkest underground, with the store and label posh isolation as a platform, keeps on producing new crisscrossing constellations within (post) punk and industrial. Age Coin is a duo of members from Lower and Vår, their music describes, according to themselves, what it’s like “when you’re feeling really low in a corner of the club”. With foggy, industrial soundscapes, they create bleak scenarios where the dim techno rhythm is hovering like an abstract threat of annihilation. A massive darkness built from steel and shabby electronics.’ — collaged

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Bee Mask live @ Enemy
‘Nearly a decade ago, Chris Madak was an art world dropout fleeing New York for life as a slacker studio rat in his hometown of Cleveland with the masters of his first full-length release in tow. Madak was also busy refining the recipe of Living, creating Bee Mask, a project within which he would construct a private world of third eye-opening sonics, paranoid faux-ritual, and highbrow hesher in-jokes. This sensibility would find its fullest expression in the zero-gravity tape and electronics constructions of 2008′s dreamlike Hyperborean Trenchtown, an LP which also marked a farewell to Cleveland. Madak would strike out in search of a route off the grid, before blinking at the aesthetic void of communal living and running aground in Philadelphia, where over the next two years he all but disappeared into his home studio, descending ever deeper into his own sonic world and issuing a series of progressively stranger and more self-referential limited releases. Madak’s work reached an international audience when it was reissued in connection with the launch of the Spectrum Spools imprint of Editions Mego in 2011.’ — elastic artists.net

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Yan Jun live @ LUFF 2012
‘Yan was born in Lanzhou in 1973, now based in Beijing. Yan’s live performance engages space feedback, loop and voice/language to make hypnotic noise. He uses concepts of recycling, feedback and reduction to create sound art work, which relates to field recording, installation, image, video, publishing and multiple forms. He uses simple equipment (cd player, I-pod, md player, mixer, effector and low-drone voice, as well as some physical sound source). Yan runs the virtual creation Sub Jam since 1998. It has released some essential underground music and independent films. In 2004 he co-founded Kwanyin Records for experimental music and sound exploration.’ — rockinchina.com

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p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Aw, thanks, Bill. About the post. I do try. Oh, man, those installations look so fantastic and on a roll. Talk about enigmatic and intriguing, and yet exquisitely interlaced. Marvels, maestro. I hope you got something awesome and responsive in return. Oh, yes, you’re there, down there! Please report on what you see. Please. Wow. ** David Ehrenstein, I’ve always found that to be so. To their credit, I might add. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Things are good novel-wise. I’m shifting things around at the moment, restructuring the totality a bit, adding/subtracting. I’ve been working on this very personal, outrushing, discursive section for a while, trying to get it initially in place and substructured enough to work on the following section, which needs that footing and is a sequence of interdependent fairytales, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can concentrate on them for a while. So, it’s good, thank you for asking. April 14, got it. Definitely want to do a intro/celebration post for the book. Let’s confer as the time nears, or I’ll have a think to think if there are things I can ask of you for it or something. So excited! ** Empty Frame, Hey. Oh, oops, Freddie Mercury in the head sounds kind of tumorous, but, hey, there are those who would consider that an imbedded crown or something. Excellent about the dispersing. May it wane and wane. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! What awesomeness to see you! You’re in Tokyo, you lucky, lucky dog! How’s my/our beloved Meguro? What have you been doing and seeing? Tell me. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. Yeah, me and ominous playgrounds are *like that*. Big buddies. No, I guess I didn’t get your follow-up message. Or it got avalanched or something. Good, excellent, I’m glad that got resolved in the perfect manner. I miss that piece of yours. The ball still bounces when I drop it? Holy shit, thanks! ** Mikel Motorcycle, That would be really great if you could Soundcloudify some of your music. For me, obviously, and for the great unwashed, obviously. Thanks much for your thoughts on Xanax to Armando. Armando, If you’re seeing this, Mikel Motorcycle spoke to your question in the comments yesterday. Thanks a lot, man. ** Gary gray, I’m on you being on it. Thanks about the Munoz post, yeah. Cool. Oh, I see: LA is fraught and not just the great place to visit that it seemed to be initially and sans respectful targeted reflection. But you’re going in any case. Best of luck on the verbal reuniting with your ex. Maybe the talk will surprise you? In the good way? I read somewhere or rather multiple somewheres that the Amtrack writers residency thing is kind of a self-serving scam, but I forget why, and never trust the reactive typers of the internet, I guess. I’m in Paris, yes. Back here, mostly for next while. I like Aaron Dilloway, of course, but I haven’t heard the new thing, but I have heard poz about it from Stephen, et. al., so, yeah, I’ll get it. Good day, bud. ** Rewritedept, Hi, C. I did? Weird. What kind of shades do you reckon your dad’s office needs now that you’re done the requisite measuring? Ha ha, I actually loved that you wished my day was superfluous, even if it was a typo or whatever. Superfluity has a kind of sublime ring to it. I suppose it was both superlative and superfluous, on reflection. Maybe more the latter, to be existential about it. RIP: Scott Asheton indeed, Such a drummer. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool. Everyone, if you haven’t had your fill of spooky playground imagistic input, know that kindly _B_A links you/us up to some links to more of the same but different over on William “Whitehouse, Cut Hands” Bennett’s blog, if you’re so inclined. That is good news. About the Art101 progress. Well, obviously, I’d be way into it if you want to promote it via a blog post here or something if that seems worth the time and effort. ** White tiger, Thanks, pal. Title courtesy of Mr. JM Barrie if it wasn’t obvious. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks a bunch. It was fun stealing that title away from Peter Pan. Me, Kong? Maybe. Deadlines are weird. I have a love/hate thing with them — ‘hate’ being the Halloween costume and ‘love’ being the scared little kid inside it or something. Same email address, you bet. Great luck with your work. ** Misanthrope, No, I’m the except one, but you can have sloppy seconds. Ouch, shit, well, you’re gonna need to get that looked at by a pro eventually then, so, I don’t know, save up or turn escort or something. I guess there’s no right or wrong when it comes to mom/son ties and how they are enacted, but, yeah, that’s a bit late in the game maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe LPS is just an unconventional son. ** Steevee, Great, congrats, Steve! That’s excellent! Confidence is all you need, man. ** Okay. Today I’m redecorating the blog into a little club, as I occasionally do, and I’m inviting you inside to watch a gig that has my fingers and stamp of approval all over it. Will you? Will I ever know if you do? Probably not. Faith is a big part of making a blog like this one. Anyway, lots of good stuff to see and hear today, if you ask me, which you obviously haven’t. See you tomorrow.