Author: DC (Page 1080 of 1133)

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Jürg Frey Miniature in Five Parts
‘It’s often said that composition has more decisions about what not to do than anything else (the same, of course, can be said of religion, with its emphasis on proscription) and in every moment of Frey’s music this is abundantly clear. It’s as clear as it is because in each piece Frey excludes a very great deal, establishing soundworlds within which only a few things can happen. Rhythm, pitch, timbre, articulation, dynamic, development, structure—essentially every aspect of compositional potential is strictly defined and confined, the resultant music playing out within those tight boundaries. In the face of music as rarefied as this, the urge to seek connections and/or discern what the music is doing emerges unbidden, and with surprising force. Whether this is fair (in general) or even relevant (in particular) is hard to determine, in part due to the fact that in much of Frey’s work, the nature of compositional intent—whether events are deliberate or coincidental—is unclear.’ — 5 against 4

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d’Eon Transparency Part III
‘Recorded during his time of involvement with Hippos in Tanks, d’Eon’s Foxconn / Trios puts together small arrangements and short loops that are coherent both forward and backward — “the MIDI information can be traversed in any arbitrary direction at any arbitrary intervals and still be harmonically and contrapuntally sound.” Schoenberg once noted that whether looking from above, from below, from the front, from behind, from the left, or from the right, a hat always remains a hat, even though it may look different from different viewpoints. For Schoenberg, musical inversion and retrograde, too, may look different in basic form but are essentially the same motif. In forming mental images, direction is only as consequential to the geometrics of their perception as it is to material objects. We can always recognize an object, no matter its physical place and are able to recreate it in the faculty of the mind in other conceivable ways. Similarly, at the core of d’Eon’s Foxconn / Trios is the presupposition that a sequence of musical events will remain known or independently determined no matter how their mutual relations are reflected.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Apparatus The Unreverberate Blackness Of The Abyss
‘Apparatus hails from the very metal country of Denmark and their first album is finally being released, as they put it, into the physical realm. Performing in strange masks they play a brand of blackened death metal that ventures into art territory. Let’s delve into this album and see what it’s all about. This album is extraordinarily grim and desolate. There is no feeling of hope while listening to these tracks. Apparatus has a superb gift for song writing. It’s easy to write paint by the numbers music. It’s easy to write comfortable music based on well worn chords and drum lines. They don’t use these beaten paths. They stray from convention. Between slowing down to the feeling of falling and out of key piano riffs seemingly played by madmen, listeners are kept on the edge of their seats by just a thread. The details mark the quality of this record. They are everywhere. The riffs, guitars, drums, and vocals are never the standard metal. Apparatus moves past the death (and black) metal inspired growls into operatic runs. I never knew where the songs where going, or what was coming next. These sense of anticipation was great and never ending. When I thought I knew what they were doing and what they’re about, Apparatus always took a different direction to keep me guessing.’ — Glacially Musical

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Paranoid London Paris Dub 3
‘Beginning in 2007, singles began emanating from a British label and act known as Paranoid London. The duo of Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley, flashed an unfettered enthusiasm for—and emulation of—the mad whinnying frequencies of the 303, but coupled it to an ethos that in the 21st century might more closely align with punk. They didn’t do any press, didn’t promo their music, didn’t upload mixes to Soundcloud to build buzz, and when they released their debut album at the end of December 2014, there was no digital version. The tracks that Delgado and Whalley craft are simple as a prison shiv, not adding layers of gloss or paint to its acid-house, but stripping it back to its basics. Almost every track is erected from the same blocks: handclaps bright as tin foil, dry snares, sharp hi-hats, concussive kicks, all of it buoyed by queasy undulations of bass. They emulate Trax and those shoddy, shady days of Chicago pressings to the point that you expect a chunk of rubber to be embedded in the records themselves.’ — Andy Beta

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Lilly Joel A Wheel In The Palm of Your Hand
‘What Lies in the Sea is the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between singer Lynn Cassiers and keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, and is the first release for their duo Lilly Joel. Both musicians are free spirits and lauded innovators in their respective fields. File under: a mix between Obscure Records and the Birmingham sound. Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers is as much a sound-sculptor as a singer, using her voice, microphone, and electronics to create soundscapes. Belgian pianist Jozef Dumoulin redefines the Fender Rhodes keyboard through a scope that is at once fully contemporary, eclectic, and highly personal. This recording marks a milestone on their path as a band and crystalizes a moment in a universe that was carefully shaped and daringly explored.’ — SOUNDOHM

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Administrator Last-Screamed Thing
‘Admn2 sounds like the your favourite electro pop band merging with thrash metal, industrial metal and synth-punk. The end result is vaguely dystopian and robotic, yet upbeat and infectiously catchy. Distorted electronic guitar riffs are played off against soaring synth lines and pop hooks, and by jove it works damn you! Special mention in particular goes to closing track “Last-Screamed Thing”, ending the album brilliantly with a bona-fide pop banger which recalls both HEALTH’s more recent output AND Yellow Magic Orchestra – while remaining totally original in its own right.’ — Fucked By Noise

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Stephan Mathieu IK Pegasi
‘Mathieu has been working the seam between ambient, musique concrète, and microsound since the late ’90s, running vintage acoustic instruments and obsolete media like wax cylinders through electroacoustic processing and digital treatments. Mathieu describes Before Nostromo as an homage to Alien’s sound design, and he has given the work a novel premise. Just prior to being awakened from hypersleep by the ship’s computer, the film’s seven characters—Ripley, Dallas, Parker, Lambert, Kane, Brett, and even Ash, the android—each have a dream. So does Jonesey the cat. Eight tracks, ranging from four minutes to nearly 20 minutes in length, represent those respective dreams. (A ninth, “Anamorphosis”, rounds out the set; Mathieu suggests that it may be attributed to the Nostromo’s other passenger, the alien.) To record the music, Mathieu used two large gongs, piano, and shortwave radio, but none of those elements are obvious from the sound of the music, which changes colors as imperceptibly as late-afternoon light.’ — Philip Sherburne

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Roly Porter 4101
‘It starts off quietly—just faint, swirling voices that sound like buzzing bees, streaked with the ghost of an orchestra and punctuated by irregular seismic rumble. The track’s midsection adds lustrous drones and two brief percussive explosions reminiscent of Swans’ Filth. And then, a reprieve: everything fades except for a silvery sliver of drone, so quiet that your instinct will be to lean in and turn the volume up. That’s when he hits you. Gale-force chorus, blackened distortion, and a shuddering that might almost be blast beats buried deep beneath white-hot feedback. It’s metal by another means, and it just keeps building from there, wave after wave, each one louder and denser than the last. It heaves like whatever bellows of the damned stokes the fires of Hell, and it is truly, awesomely terrifying.’ — Philip Sherborne

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Foot Hair King of Scum
‘Foot Hair’s self-titled debut album reduces sonics from the likes of Brainbombs and Upsidedown Cross into an unforgiving mash of dirge. It’s simple, raw and extremely powerful stuff. Rarely do bands manage to create such a cacophony of hedonistic terror whilst simultaneously projecting a sense of abject absolute apathy and nihilism. “Foot Hair have excelled themselves on their vinyl debut: this is a very horrible record which their work colleagues/extended family members should probably be kept from hearing about.” — The Quietus “FOOT HAIR make some fucking heavy punk music, repetitive as shit, heavy as fuck (again), and rife with weird devolutions into noise, big bass tones, and the willingness to hang onto the goddamn riff.” — Boston Hassle’ — Box Records

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Mika Vainio & Franck Vigroux Mémoire
‘Mika Vainio and Frank Vigroux have revealed further details of their collaborative album on Cosmo Rhythmatic, the Repitch side-label run by Shapednoise, Ascion and D.Carbone. Titled Peau froide, lèger soleil, the album from the Pan Sonic co-founder and French electroacoustic artist is three years in the making, and follows a show they performed in Paris in 2012. According to the label, the “intense” nine-track album is “an exercise in sensitive intensity” that combines Vainio’s signature electro grooves with Vigroux’s expertise in “spatial abstraction and tonal radicalism”.’ — Fact Magazine

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Golden Teacher Love Rocket
‘Born from a collaboration between the experimental trio Ultimate Thrush and the duo house Silk Cut, Golden Teacher has taken contemporary electronic music one step further mapping out a new sound route in which rhythmic complexity and a dense atmospheres lead directly to the dance floor. Signed to Optimo Records, Golden Teacher blend echoes of Arthur Russell, Shackleton and African music to come up with the unique and inimitable sounds that can be heard on the second EP “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”.’ — Primavera Club

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Circus Devils Wizard Hat Lost In The Stars
‘Circus Devils was originally conceived in 2001 as a side project to Robert Pollard’s main work with Guided by Voices. As of 2015, the band has released thirteen full-length albums. Beginning with the release of their first album, Ringworm Interiors, Circus Devils dismissed the styles of Pollard’s other musical endeavors for a more experimental approach, taking an ominous and nightmarish tone, exploring the themes
of good and evil. According to the group’s whimsical website bio, Circus Devils formed because a dog-faced man approached each member on separate occasions to deliver the message, “Circus Devils is Real.” Like this story, their lyrics are often unsettling fictional tales of horror delivered within deconstructed rock operas. Each Circus Devils album is distinguished by a theme, concept, or production style which sets it apart from the band’s other albums.’ — collaged

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Gnod Vatican
‘Perpetual dorm favorite Jacques Derrida once wrote “there is no outside-text”, as in, context is everything. We can apply this, then, to the all-too-obvious release date of some of Infinity Machines’ songs onto Spotify: April 20, 2015. While the stoner holiday has become relatively commercialized and quickly burned-out by sub-par releases from rappers, GNOD’s offering is a token that even the purest of ‘60s tokers would be apt to spin. By not diluting the droning journey with frequent melody shifts and the inclusion of blaring instruments, the few, consistent sounds pulsating each song’s core makes the daunting, mammoth 1:51:30 runtime seem completely necessary. You don’t sprint through the cosmos, you traverse through them, absorbing the gaseous bodies and finding asylum in the dark. And when that black hole comes, you slip right in like it’s your favorite nightgown.’ — Pop Matters

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Giant Claw DARK WEB 003
‘For at least one album now, musician, artist, label owner, and former writer Keith Rankin has toyed with the counterintuitive idea that the artificiality of digital technology has the power to liberate human nature. As Giant Claw, he’s been engineering virtual spaces that, in their anarchic profusion of decontextualized synths and soundbites, evoke nothing about the everyday environment they leave behind. From 2010’s three-part self-titled release to this year’s Dark Web, he’s created disorienting music almost completely detached from its surrounding world, music that represents not so much this world’s troubling contents as a vast, nonsensical void. As such, he’s enabled his listeners to feel and to think free from any reminder of the constraints they face on a day-to-day basis, enabling them, if only just a little, to be and to become according to their own innate impulses.’ — Simon Chandler

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Yves De Mey Adamance
‘Drawn With Shadow Pens is the new album by Antwerp based synthesist and sound-sculptor Yves De Mey. With previous outings on a slew of renowned labels such as Modal Analysis, Semantica, Opal Tapes, his own Archives Intérieures imprint with Sendai partner Peter Van Hoesen, and the now defunct Sandwell District, Drawn With Shadow Pens is the next offering in the Y.D.M. codex. Rarely is a gifted musician afforded the luxury of also being an incredible engineer, and this new album is a testament to these talents. “Prelament” sets the album off with a dense fog of acrobatic waveform maneuvers slowly shapeshifting through the audio spectrum before arriving at a vibrating, multi-dimensional sonic black hole . Tracks like “Adamance” and Xylo” sound like audible holograms, with stray rhythms dissipating into and out of sharp modulations and sinuous drone layers. A pure sense mastery over the instruments played is evident, however, many compelling sound events seem to occur and disappear almost magically. The beautiful and spacious depths of “Ostia” unfold with monk-like patience, creating a surreal and hypnotic electronic sound environment.’ — Spectrum Spools

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p.s. RIP: Pierre Boulez. ** Moumita Dey, Oh, is that right? ** James, Wait, happy birthday! Everyone, it’s James (Nulick’s) birthday today! Wish him happiness and/or enthrone him in your happier thoughts today. Have a seriously great one! How did you celebrate? Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, if you want to put in a good word for ‘LCTG’ with Cinefamily, Zac and I would be very grateful. They agreed to consider the film, and we submitted the film to them, about two months ago, and then we never heard a word from them again. We really want to show the film in LA, and Cinefamily seemed like one of our few options, so, yeah, that would be great! Thank you very, very much, David! ** S., Thanks, man. If he does, it’s a big bathroom. I listened to a few of his podcasts, but not for a while. I think I stopped listening for the most part after the Kanye West one, which I thought was just awful. Truth and desire seem like irreconcilable ideas to me, I think. ** Steevee, Hi. The terminology thing is very fluid, though. I think it’s hard to generalize about tags’ effects, or at least it’s not a b&w; decision to put controversial terms on a ‘no use’ list. By pure coincidence, Jayne County, the punk trans legend, was having a big discussion on her Facebook feed yesterday about ‘tranny’, a term she prefers to use and to be called, and she got a lot of support from other trans-identifying people for that. Always best to be cautious when you’re unsure what your listeners’ attitude is. But, at the same time, I think the hypersensitivity around identifiers and equating the mere usage of a controversial term, whatever the context, as an inherent attack and a proof-giver of the user’s homophobia or racism or misogyny and etc., and the connected general trigger warning fad these days, are just bizarre and anti-intelligent and lazy and depressing. Anyway, it’s all very strange and confusing out there these days in so many departments. Congrats on your ‘Hateful 8’ review finally seeing the light, and I hope you see the accompanying moolah asap. That’s funny about the critic calling the Marclay film conservative. I guess that kind of feeds into what we’ve been talking about. Weird. ‘Of the North’ sounds kind of really awful. Jesus. Why do you think First Look is showing it? Strange. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, exactly like the Republicans. Which is why it’s so important for people in the US to eat their personal ideologies come election day and make a collective effort to do whatever it takes to keep the Republicans away from the top job. In my opinion. But, shit, I really don’t want to get into talking about politics here, actually. Nothing good can come from that. So, never mind. Anyway, scary shit. ** Paul Curran, Hi. Awesome, glad you dug it. The narrative was exciting. It also has an ‘Au Hazard Balthazar’ quality to it. It’s weird. I couldn’t see any logical reason why getting from Australia to Japan and vice versa would be made so difficult. But I suppose the airlines have some moneyed reason. Awesome, yeah, post that clip somewhere if you don’t mind. Your kid seems really incredibly cool. ‘Cellphone novel’: what a cool term. I’ve never heard it before. ‘Light novel’ too. That sounds like an exciting plan. Wow. Yeah, when you get back to thinking about it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Ha ha, ‘I think it’s just better to call people by their first names’: I’m totally with you on that one. Yeah, but it made a lo
ser nobody famous. But being famous when you’re dead doesn’t do you much good, does it? So, I guess you’re right. That Green Beret friend’s thing/story is kind of awful. I mean, there’s a horrible black humor thing to it. A ‘Jack Ass’ if they were creepy thing. Poor guy. Weird. Huh. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I know, Pierre Boulez, that’s a huge loss. And people here say that Pierre Henry is really in bad shape. Ugh. Good luck circumventing the ramped up aspect of the work. ** Jeremy McFarland, Hi, Jeremy. Funny that we were talking about North Korea yesterday, and then that whole ‘bomb test’ thing happened. Thank you a lot for that video. I only saw the first two seconds of it so far, but I’ll be all over that. Well, the backstory on the TV series is kind of complicated, but, briefly-ish, the main character is a woman who’s very loosely based on Candice Bergen, the actress, who is the daughter of this guy, Edgar Bergen, who was the most famous ventriloquist in the world when I was kid. Really massively famous. Candice Bergen wrote an autobiography in which she revealed that she grew up feeling really neglected because her father treated his very famous dummy/puppet Charlie McCarthy like it was his son, and he gave it a million times more attention than he gave to her. So, in the TV show, the main character is the tormented, kind of crazy daughter of a deceased, extremely famous fictional ventriloquist named Klaus Kraus, and she has inherited her father’s extremely famous dummy, named Frankie in our version. They live together, and she carries Frankie with her everywhere, animating him and treating him like he’s a real person, and there’s all this tension between them because she resents his former fame and his prized status re: her father, and then all these wacky things happen. And there’s the general weird thing going on where she’s obviously creating everything he does and everything he says, but she acts like she isn’t. In the first episode, one thing that happens is Frankie finds out about Halloween and demands they celebrate it even though they live in Switzerland where no one celebrates Halloween or even knows much about it. In the second episode, Frankie gets kidnapped among other things. The show gets gradually less wacky and more dark and experimental and moody episode by episode. Etc. It’s kind of a hopefully very complicated, strange comedy among other things. So, that’s the gist so far. Thanks for asking! Zac is on the upswing but not completely better. Hm, I don’t know Australia at all, so it all seems like a big exciting mystery. I hope we can travel into the outback a bit. I’m really interested to see that. I’m the type that packs early when I can help it. Zac’s the type who throws everything into a suitcase an hour before he leaves for the airport. Kentucky, huh. I was there once. A long time ago. I just remember it being really green and pretty. And that there was a huge, awesome cave there. Slaughterhouse yikes! That’s intense. (I’ve been vegetarian since I was 16, so stuff like that is freaky to me.) I’m happy to share that info here. Sounds really interesting. Here I go. Everyone, d.l. Jeremy McFarland has an interesting proposal for you. Please read and accept his challenge, if you like. Here he is: ‘I am helping with some contests at the school I just finished at and thought maybe some people here would be interested. I hope you don’t mind if I share some information about it here. There’s a poetry contest and a short fiction (1200 words or less) contest going on. Winners get a cash prize and will be published in the next journal (poetry) or an anthology (short fiction). We’re accepting submissions until February 1st. It does cost a little to submit, but it all goes towards supporting the continuation of The Heartland Review. Here’s the link for more information.’ Thanks, Jeremy! Love to you too! ** Okay. I made another gig of music I’ve been into lately, and now it’s up to you whether you want to enjoy the gig in part, in whole, or, well, not at all, I guess, which doesn’t seem like a very good option really, but, hey, you are free people, free to be you and you! See you tomorrow.

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Shapednoise What Is It Like
‘Nino Pedone – aka Shapednoise – has accumulated an enviable discography during his relatively short career. Previous releases on Hospital Productions, Opal Tapes, Stroboscopic Artefacts, Russian Torrent Versions, his own Repitch and Cosmo Rhythmatic imprints, and now Type Recordings have cemented his reputation as a stalwart of the noise techno genre. His second album, like many second albums, seeks to extend his self-erected boundaries, and Different Selves is certainly his most abstract and punishing work to date. It is the beats that really make this album. Pedone’s work was already highly accomplished in this regard, but in Different Selves they have evolved into a more complex and savage form. In a track like ‘Well-Being’, the icy, satanic gusts of static can only be understood as such through the brutality of the bassline, which situates the listener somewhere in the vicinity of the seventh circle of Inferno. Whereas in some albums of the genre, the smattering of 4/4 can seem disposable, Shapednoise lets it be known that it is the beats that unleash the emotional potential of the other elements, and in so doing brings Different Selves out of the underworld and onto a more resonant plane.’ — Maria Perevedentseva

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Föllakzoid Electric
‘Föllakzoid began seven years ago as a trance experience between childhood friends Diego, Juan Pablo, and Domingo from Santiago, Chile. Heavily informed by the heritage of the ancient music of the Andes, the band has learned to integrate this influence with contemporary sounds of their times, creating a rich yet minimal atmosphere. For III, the band wanted to expand their sound while building an atmosphere with mainly monochords and reiteration. After recording and mixing the album on their own at their studio at BYM Records, they partnered with German electronic maestro Atom TM to flesh out the album’s synth parts. Most of the sounds he provided were atonal electronic sounds, aiming for concrete frequencies and sampled organic glitches. (The Korg synthesizer Atom TM plays on this record was used by Kraftwerk on tour in the ’80s.)’ — Sacred Bones

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Gabriel Saloman Contained Battle / Ascend
‘Gabriel Saloman presents the second volume in his Movement Building trilogy, continuing the release of original compositions commissioned for contemporary dance works. Following the enthusiastically received first installment — Vol. 1’s album-length The Disciplined Body (SHELTER 051LP, 2014) — Saloman offers up five tracks that combine shimmering bowed guitars and reverberant acoustic percussion into a meditative and powerful break from anything he’s produced before. Mobilizing the frequencies of contemporary electronic music (fine-tuned to speaker-rattling effect by Helmut Erler at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering), Movement Building Vol. 2 abandons the conventional instrumentation- and genre-motifs embraced by many of Saloman’s peers in favor of a unique hybrid of avant-drone, psych-rock, and Japanese traditional music. Exposure to the monolithic bass and open spaces of dub-influenced EDM has led Saloman in a different direction than many of his peers (including artists such as Cut Hands, Vatican Shadow, and former Yellow Swans bandmate Pete Swanson) and toward something that moves bodies and triggers their nerve endings, but with no concession to the dance floor.’ — Forced Exposure

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Iglooghost Peach Rift
‘Only 18 years old and hailing from the UK, the brisk, desultory, grime-infused sound of Iglooghost has been making some significant waves in the world of electronic music. Dynamo DJs and producers such as Mary Ann Hobbs, Kuthmah, and Flying Lotus—who has had a noticeable influence on his sound—have been playing his tracks as of late and this young-in has already begun to headline his own shows in London. His music is so dense and overwhelming I can barely describe it.’ — collaged

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Pedestrian Deposit live @ Ende Tymes
‘Long-running Los Angeles duo Pedestrian Deposit are virtually peerless when it comes to tension. They have a reputation for oscillating unpredictably between fine-tuned restraint and vicious abandon, putting nearly all tools revealed in the last 60 years of post-Cage experimental sound to work for them in the process. Shannon Kennedy has lacerated her arm at live shows, using her n
eck and forearm as tuning pegs for a length of metal wire played with her cello bow; Jonathan Borges has used his arsenal of electronics to push sound systems and musical constraints to their furthest limits, expertly dancing through tonal fields both harsh and lovely. They’re obviously part of a long lineage of freak forefathers/mothers, but they’re also the only unit that moves through the space in just the way they do.’ — Dustin Krcatovich

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Anthony Child The Chief
‘Melting our minds for over two decades with his beat-based productions, this time renowned techno-producer Anthony Child aka Surgeon is putting the fundamental components of electronic sound production to the fore. Focussing on the development of timbre and texture, Child creates exquisite drones, that give an insight in his improvisatory sensibility and dig deep into the potentials of modular synthesis. As the title already indicates, it’s a very special setting that he has chosen for this endeavour: The jungle of Maui seems to have acted as a stimulus for this exercise in concentration and trance. The intertwining of the electronic instrument that meets the sublime sounds of nature, opens up an intimate resonant chamber. Birds, insects and raindrops are allowed to break through, while you can sense the thick, humid air and deep colours of the surrounding resonating in the pastose synth lines.’ — Editions Mego

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Jlin Nandi
‘Armed perhaps with drum machines and synthesizers, Jlin goes in, arranges the signifiers and lets us do the detection. We meet at the borders and enter the depths, puzzled by the vernacular. The strange “there-but-not-there” feeling of hearing the same hi-hat played out a million, perhaps a billion times: as many times as there are atoms inside that hi-hat. We get used to that. We arrived here because of it. To hear these sounds, to settle down in the slight discomfort caused by the anxiety and the warlike patterns, to say, finally, at last, with a big breath, that this completes my personality and this symbolizes my psyche. This music, footwork, like fixed points in space, grips me, gets me caught in its algebra and mathematics and allows moments of culture to zoom in, like on “BuZilla,” when I hear a sample of Godzilla and the infamous “GET OVER HERE” command from Scorpion in Mortal Kombat; a sound, mind you, that I’ve known since a toddler. After all these years, the geometry remains, suspended in nudity, with all the world closing in, pulsing darkly.’ — HYDROYOGA

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Consumer Electronics History Of Sleepwalking
‘Best whispers quietly over a carpet of fizzy, but hardly explosive, electronic drone at the start of ‘History Of Sleepwalking’. Rest assured, noiseniks, this is a case of Consumer Electronics getting more expansive, not less abrasive, and it’s mere moments before Haswell kicks in with some blistering martial beats and Best leaps from murmur to his characteristic howl with the line “How the fuck did I get here?”. Consumer Electronics’ tendency to hurl oaths and revel in shocking imagery on stage somewhat obscures the sheer poetry of their lyrics, and Dollhouse Songs contains some of their most evocative imagery. “Save yourself/From this pain this hedonism/Shaped by adult hand/Good solid hand/Occult bankers/Ministers of state/Roped around your feet,” Best shrieks a bit later on ‘History Of Sleepwalking’, his politics clear even as he flounders in the despair of what our leaders are doing to us (“Learn your fucking place!” he also barks in Cameron-mode), even as we sleepwalk towards letting them go further and further with their corruption, lies and manipulation. The track ends with a brutal, emphatic exhortation: “Reject obligation and fear/Become a fucking insult/And kill them in their beds”. This may sound like typical noise fare, but in the hands of Consumer Electronics comes over more like a revolutionary mantra.’ — Joseph Burnett

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DJ Paypal Slim Trak
‘It wasn’t too long ago that Paypal himself was working his happy hardcore fanaticism into the footwork bass lines. While those hardcore elements are non-existent on this effort, the whimsical spirit remains. Just as happened with house, techno, and hip-hop, an international collective is contorting a US-born sound into new forms around their unique experiences and influences. Footwork/juke is quickly accumulating the breadth of culture of the seminal house sound that originated in the same underserved communities in Chicago. Rather than put himself forward, in remaining faceless, Paypal is ensuring the best opportunity for this beloved genre to flourish.’ — Consequence of Sound

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Oren Ambarchi & Johan Berthing live @ Dear Serge
‘Oren Ambarchi and Johan Berthling are two masters of reducing music’s peak intensities to their root meaning. Oren’s early solo guitar works rendered this process with an instantly recognisable combination of sine wave throb and precisely controlled attack that has bloomed in maturity – concentrating the ecstatic potential of the guitar solo by folding it back on itself and stacking the points of greatest liminal intensity into waves of powerfully psychedelic excess while also encompassing more explicit references to his deep love of pop/rock songform and rhythmic/riffing minimalism. Johan Berthling’s attention to purity of sound and his unflagging pulse has made him one of Europe’s finest bass players whether invigorating numerous acoustic ensembles (Arashi/LSB/Martin Küchen etc) or keeping Fire!’s free/jazz/rock amalgam locked during explosions of orchestral colour. He first came to my attention in the trio Tape – a group that have continued to refine an open approach to pastoral minimalism, rich and strikingly gorgeous without resorting to emotional posturing.’ — Hapna

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Ramleh Weird Tyranny
‘For the past decade or so, maybe more, Ramleh on record has been, essentially, a power electronics outfit. The duo includes founder Gary Mundy (also the man behind Broken Flag records and erstwhile occasional member of Skullflower), and longtime ally Anthony diFranco, who use battered electronic devices to build up walls of ear-shattering noise, along the way taking the Whitehouse template and finding its inner psychedelia. Fans of the band, and those fortunate to see Ramleh live in the years since 2009’s Valediction will testify, however, that there are, in fact, two versions of the band: the PE one, and a much more rock-focused incarnation featuring Breathless’ Martyn
Watts on drums. Circular Time is a much-overdue chance for that second iteration to showcase its potency in the studio, as it has done on many occasion on stages across the globe. And the “rock” Ramleh, well, fucking rocks. Seems it doesn’t matter if they’re using noise generators or guitars, these guys can throw up a wall of sound like no other.’ — Joseph Burnett

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Okokon Contelest
‘Africanus Okokon is a visual artist, a specialist in collage, video and animation. Turkson Side, his debut album, is almost entirely made up of samples, stitched together with conspicuous thread. Kinetic rhythms, half-tuned radios, keyboard mashing, backwards incantation, crickets, and electrical storms all feature, or are suggested, by free-association. Here, Okokon uses samples to mimic what might go through a magpie mind left with a quarter of an hour to space-stare. It gets better with familiarity, too: something that sounded like a tropical bird cry at first might, the second time around, transform into a sonar ping. ‘Contest’ is the album’s only mischievous track. It’s initially built around a laconic Britney Spears vocal sample (from the closest she got to avant-R&B;, 2009’s ‘Break The Ice’) over the bland tinkle of a factory-setting ringtone. This soon gives way to unhurried percussion, which in itself is destabilised by high-pitched hums. The effect is an axis-free spin, all the more nauseous for its apparent slow speed.’ — Jeanette Leech

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RAMZi (w/ Bataille Solaire) Monster’s Makeup
‘In the world of electronic cassettes, boundaries tend to be porous and soft, details typically smudged. But few artists inhabit a realm as amorphous and trippy as Montrealer-in-Vancouver Phoebé Guillemot. Her last release as RAMZi, the Bébites tape on Pygmy Animals, was a quivering mass of clammy texture and beats that felt like biorhythms. Guillemot’s way with percussion is something to behold. She makes drum tracks that feel sticky and malleable, as if she’s building them out of chewing gum. Camped somewhere between vaporwave, techno, ambient and new age, it exists firmly and defiantly in a liminal zone.’ — collaged

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Robin Fox Dark Rain
‘The outline here was to explore the themes of combustion and heat dissipating in various physical systems.. Greatly extending the language of his creative output Fox constructs a synthesis of electronic and acoustic sources creating a deeply nuanced excursion through space and time, timbre and texture. There is a subtle intensity to the works here, ‘A Pound of Flesh’ is an industrial strength spiralling drone, intoxicating, disorientating, ‘Antlers’ takes the listener on an eleven minute ride through a vortex of pulsing and swirling electronics whilst the title track is an unnerving combination of distressed field recordings, closed mic’d crackle and a foreboding distant pulse. ‘Through Sky’ starts out with a slow menacing rhythmic backbone which hosts an arsenal of small sounds until a certain wind supplants all in an admirable and somewhat haunted exchange. With it’s combination of vast caverns, spiraling counterflows and microscopic investigations Fox has opened up a new world of sound in his personally trajectory and one most unlike others existing anywhere in the present day.’ — collaged

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Duane Pitre live @ Base Elements Art Gallery
‘Duane Pitre is an American avant-garde composer, performer, and sound artist. His work often focuses on the interaction between electronic sound and acoustic instrumentation, chaos and discipline. Pitre has been featured in publications such as The Wire, Foxy Digitalis, Pitchfork, Dusted, and NewMusicBox. His work has been released by various labels including Important Records, Root Strata, NNA, and Quiet Design, and he has appeared on soundtracks with Dinosaur Jr., Battles, and Animal Collective.’ — 4’33” Cafe

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Sunn O))) Kannon 1
‘The dark, droning metal of Sunn O))) must be approached with a reverence for its spiritual and aesthetic values. You don’t just listen to Sunn; you experience it. Built on repetition and atmosphere, the ambience created by Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson encourages introspection from its audience and a listening environment that allows such. The music of Sunn has become viable in the realms of yoga (aka Black YO)))ga) because of its visceral, transportive qualities. Kannon carries on many of those traditions, emphasizing meditative drones across a tri-movement piece. Per the album’s press release, “Kannon” literally represents an aspect of Buddha: the “goddess of mercy” or “perceiving the sounds (or cries) of the world.” To classify Kannon as an album relegates it to the commercial framework of recorded music and economic product, demeaning some of that spiritual allure. Sunn seek to defy that consumerist inevitability, essentially creating a mixed media art project around the release of Kannon. Critical theorist Aliza Shvartz was commissioned to write liner notes, and Swiss designer Angela LaFont created the abstract sculpture on the cover — “a vision of Kannon”. A unified message is spread across multiple mediums, and it’s this amorphous form of expression that makes Sunn such a musical anomaly: The music is a vehicle for expressing beliefs and ideas, not a means unto itself.’ — Consequence of Sound

*

p.s. Hey. ** H, Hi. Cool, I’ll get the Wave Books book. Thanks much. No, I didn’t do an escort post last week, as far as I know? ** M, Hi, M! Really good to know. Awesome means of discovery. I’ve got a bead on it, and hopefully it’ll be in my field of hearing in the next day or so. Thanks so much! ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you on behalf of the lad himself. Gotcha on the Spielberg. Sounds like a film that in-flight entertainment was made for … whatever that means. ** James, Hi. No, I haven’t seen it. You might be the first person I know who liked it. All power to Mr. La Bruce, but I’m not a big fan. I liked ‘Otto’ pretty well. And the very early films have a reckless charm. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I liked the Regis record too. It’s pretty terrific. I too am quite intrigued by the ‘High Rise’ film after watching that trailer. Whoa, it has begun! Hooray! Obviously, let me … Everyone, May I have your attention? Thank you. _Black_Acrylic aka multi-striped artist Ben Robinson has launched a new writing project/blog called BLUE EYES: A CHERYL FANPAGE, and, need I even say, said site should really become one of you regular stopp
ing points beginning now. The first squib is awaiting you, and it portends a helluva future. Let’s all go there on three. Okay. One … two … three. ** Liquoredgoat, Absolutely yes and high-five on his ‘phenomenological flexibility’. Awesome. Amy teaches at Irvine? Oh, right, of course. She’s the best. Ai went there? That I didn’t know. That joint has turned out some pretty good writers, that’s for sure. Wow, long possible stretch in which to hear back from them. Interesting. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Oh, well, thanks. Very happy to have new sites to explore. That is a curious Twitter thing and coincidence. I never look at Twitter. Something about the form just doesn’t do it for me. I should get over that. Well, you know I’m going to say you should totally do that ‘Guest of Post’, but I said it anyway. ** Steevee, Hi. Hm, okay, hm, re: the Spielberg. I still think a long plane flight is the only way I’m going to possibly see it. I’ll check about the French DVD. That makes sense, yeah. ** Statictick, I think a cool thing about the form of the escort profile text is that it has a very big range, from the tragic/touching to the wildly and, even, occasionally, sophisticatedly comedic, to, of course, the horror thing. You should be able to order ‘Gone’. People seem to be doing it all the time. Write to them? Cool about the ‘Minus’ progress! ** Sypha, Congrats on the 200 page mark! That’s mega! I’ve listened to bits and pieces of the Cyrus/Lips record. Seems fun. I don’t like her music in general, obviously, but I do think she’s doing interesting stuff with her image and celebrity, for sure, and I’m in the pro-Miley camp. Pitchfork was just stupid and pre-determindely out for blood about that album like they can get sometimes. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. I def. will listen to Collapse. If my future music quests were a turntable, Collapse would be its lowering stylus. Dude, if it’s any consolation, which it isn’t, I know, we’ve been rejected all over the place. I’m not surprised, but it’s not fun either. My big beef is with film programmers at non-festival film venues, a number of whom, in our experience, promise an answer very soon then just totally blow us off and don’t even have the decency or professionalism or whatever to send a quick email saying they don’t want it. Really fucking rude. And it’s weird how many of them have done that. Huh, I think if I think about it, which I will need a little time to do, I should be able to think of non-thrillers featuring missing people. Let me ask generally on your behalf. Everyone, Kindly read this question by the excellent filmmaker and d.l. Aaron Mirkin and answer it if you can, okay? Thank you! Here he and his question are: ‘Can you (or anyone here) think of any books or films or anything that are about missing persons but aren’t thrillers?’ ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. My holidays should be very low-key. I’ll be here. No big plans other than some buche eating and walking around to take in the decorations and a bit of gifting. Oh, that’s cool you talked to Gisele! I’m seeing her tonight, and I’ll remind her of what a swell guy you are. That doesn’t make sense maybe, but you know what I mean. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Those escorts can have the readers who read me for stuff like that with my blessing. That is a lot of sitting, man. Not that I don’t sit here at the computer 15,000 hours a day, but, still, yeah, hugs. You need a helicopter. Ask Santa. You never know. Ooh, a PS4, you are one giant heck of a great surrogate father or big brother or whatever to that kiddo, man, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Well, there are infinite degrees of non-normality, from the barely-ish to the subtlest to the most confrontational. I suppose Miley’s recent swing leftward is good for ‘the normals’. As if there is normality in the first place, of course. ** Mark Gluth, Hi, Mark! Man, I miss and want that brain reconfiguring that playing video games can do so bad. I know exactly what you mean. I’m trying to wait until I finish my novel, but fuck knows when I’ll have the space to do that. Visualization: With Gisele’s stuff, usually, there’s already a cast and sometimes even a set design in place before I start my writing part, so I guess I don’t tend to, or even have the option to, build personalized mental images in our collaborations. With the films with Zac, yeah, I do, in a sketchy way at least, to help me compose the settings and characters, but Zac is doing the same thing as he writes them with me, and it’s funny that we very easily work together on the scripts and ideas and character building, but, inevitably, he’ll end up having very different mental images in mind for everything, and, since he’s the director, his envisionings are the ones we implement, and I find that exciting. Take care, you too! ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Yeah, I mean, if it’s no trouble, I would really love to read a scan or anything of Zac G’s book.That would be awesome! Ancient books? Like … really ancient? Hm. Maybe not. I don’t feel hardly any pull towards ancient literature, I think probably for the good old reason of having been forced to read that stuff in school when I couldn’t begin to appreciate it, and there being collateral damage from that. Also, I think, probably incorrectly, of ancient literature being primarily about story telling, and I’m not really interested in story telling when it isn’t balanced out by brain activity and consciousness in the writing itself. But, yeah, that could be unfair towards elderly writing. Anyway, I think your plan is a super interesting plan. I certainly would be very interested to hear what you end up particularly liking or even loving. My morning’s decent so far, and I hope yours is way more than that. ** Right. Today I made you another gig of stuff I’ve been into and listening to, if you like. See you tomorrow.