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OOIOO Atatawa
‘OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into to making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.’ — Thrill Jockey
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Puce Mary The Course
‘Once in a while an artist comes along who manages to both cherish the tradition of industrial music and at the same time walk their own path, choosing their own route to truth: Experiment. With her first solo full length, released last year, Puce Mary managed to do exactly that – and now with the follow-up Persona, she proves herself to be one of the most interesting projects around today. Persona manages to balance the hyper personal universe of the artist with enough care for presentation to make it valuable for everyone to listen to, and take part in her experience. And she does that through six tracks, that each take their own place while corresponding beautifully with its neighbors. From primitive rhythmic patterns to elaborate drone pieces and pain stricken vocals. Insisting on finding new routes for the work and with a rare honesty, “Persona” holds its listener captive from start to finish.’ — Posh Isolation
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Pallbearer The Ghost I Used to Be
‘With the groundwork laid upon with Sorrow and Extinction, Foundations Of Burden essentially takes the PALLBEARER creative oeuvre to new realms that not only takes their doom metal pedigree even further, but also sees the them harness their prog and traditional heavy metal influences even more. The result being an album much more than its predecessor with the melodies and harmonies being more massive, the music more progressive and layered, the overall atmosphere and sonic weight even more earth shattering. Production and sound wise, Billy Anderson’s expertise behind the control boards has helped PALLBEARER flesh out and highlight their sound even more through massive crushing tones, attention to deteail and defined clarity while still maintaining that classic almost vintage-like production feel.’ — Profound Lore
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Tlaotlon Cassini Tubs
‘Rather than qualifying Tlaotlon as one of the innumerable acts that direct themselves toward the stimulation, sharing, and settling of emotion, its music’s sleek burbling and erratic turns of phrase lump Coubrough in that marginalized niche of soundmakers who chase after emotion’s suppression or even dissolution, who want to make its expression nigh on impossible. This is why the steady measurements of an artificial kickdrum are unceremoniously disturbed by out-of-step snares, hiccup’d synths, and irregularly phased samples, creating multiple trains of thought and affect that, in cancelling each other out, thereby prevent themselves from enjoying a concerted or continuous effect on the listener’s moodscape. And without their mutual coordination, even though this listener might momentarily recognize the shimmied, heavy clinking of a PC-generated riff as evoking maybe a futuristic wasteland or soulless HTML interface, any development or consolidation of her initial reaction is going to be quickly stifled by the arrant percussion and static-infused textural flourishes, leaving her stranded in a psychically indeterminate limbo.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes
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Tashi Dorji Throttle
‘One fascinating paradox about art is that limits can prove freeing. Narrow your parameters and you might find solutions you wouldn’t have if your choices were infinite. It’s why entire movements have been based on self-imposed restrictions: take the Oulipo group, whose Georges Perec wrote an entire novel without the letter e. … It might seem odd to compare those contrivances to the simple act of making solo instrumental guitar music. After all, the form is not exactly unusual, having been around longer than jazz ensembles or rock bands. Still, to play guitar alone is to submit to restrictions—not only in the finite number of sounds you can make, but in what little innovation is still available. So much has been done and so many legends loom large—especially, for anyone picking strings now, the two-headed monster of John Fahey and Derek Bailey—that playing something new seems nearly impossible. I’m not sure Tashi Dorji has made anything completely new yet, but the range of creative solutions he’s found while trying to avoid the well-worn paths of instrumental guitar music is thrilling.’ — Marc Masters
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Martyrdöd En Jobbigt Jävel
‘Swedish wrecking-crew Martyrdöd have done enough to separate themselves from the crust-pack over their decade-plus existence. By combining the raw intensity and hardcore punk ethos of Käng forbears Anti Cimex and Totalitär with the twin-guitar attack of classic rock and the epic Scandinavian metal of Bathory, the independence borne from this blend of influences and the overall ambition of Martyrdöd – who boast members of Agrimonia, Skitsystem, and Miasmal – has never been in dispute. With their politically-charged 2012 debut for Southern Lord, Paranoia, Martyrdöd managed to announce themselves to a larger, albeit still underground audience. The album was well received by critics and crust fans alike; its incendiary spirit and ever-increasing melodic mindfulness proved to be salacious bedfellows. As a result, there’s greater anticipation surrounding Martyrdöd’s new album, Elddop, than on any of their previous four full-length albums. And unsurprisingly, Elddop proves itself to be just as good, if not better, than its predecessor(s).’ — The Quietus
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Cannibal Movie Fame
‘This Italian duo, consisting of Donato Epiro on organ (an old Italian one, according to the band) and Gaspare Sammartano on drums, cranks out some serious music that seems improbable given the number of players. If you want to talk about something being way beyond the sum of its parts, this is it, because at any given time, thanks to some creative layering and manipulation, the organ sounds like it could be three or four instruments playing at once, piling up riffs, effects, and reverb in scattered, pulsing, propulsive collages of sound. Still, the organ would be nothing without the solid drumming behind it — simultaneously loose and locked-in, the drumwork manages to both ground the music but also add to the overall wild atmosphere of the music. Put this together, and you get some incredible sound voodoo that evokes free-form psychedelia, krautrock, jazz improv, and a little bit of Suicide for good measure.’ — Secret Decoder
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Moiré Attitude
‘Moiré’s Shelter opens with a rising clatter. The moment when the bassline and loping kick join the thrum is a neat microcosm for both the album and the producer’s name: a first pattern onto which a second seems superimposed, creating a whole in a constant state of flux. Claps and stabs on ‘Attitude’ lag, while a skeletal, gloomy bassline anchors everything deep without adding much by way of a groove. As elements flutter in and out of the mix, it becomes increasingly apparent that concern for the dance floor is peripheral to Moiré’s introspective take on club music. In that sense, it owes a small but definite debt to the nebulous dance-not-dance music of Actress et al; but where that was an obvious touch point for earlier Moiré singles, the similarities are far less pronounced on Shelter. Moiré doesn’t search for perfect beats as much as he allows them to wander in and out of his tunes, so grooves are as apt to slip away just as suddenly as they appear.’ — Fact Magazine
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Moonface City Wrecker
‘Hello everyone and anyone. I recently made some more recordings under the name Moonface, which take the form of a 5 song EP called City Wrecker, and run at around half an hour. “City Wrecker” is the title track of the EP. I wrote it before Miley Cyrus released “Wrecking Ball,” but I cannot prove it. Oh well. In describing the song (and maybe the whole EP) I would say it’s the aesthetic opposite of “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, which is not to say that’s a good thing or a bad thing, just an apple for you to hold up beside your orange. Regardless of all that, my friend Eetu, who recorded this EP, still likes to call the song “Wrecking Ball” and to sometimes call me Miley, but that’s okay cuz we’re buddies. I lived in Finland for a couple of years, but now I live in a little town nestled in the woods of Vancouver Island. This is a recent move, and so City Wrecker represents the last album I completed in Helsinki. Maybe I will go back to that big icy lighthouse, and all the lovely weirdos within I have come to love, one day, but for now I have used it up.’ — Spencer Krug
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Foxes in Fiction Rearrange
‘Toronto-native Warren Hildebrand began his Foxes in Fiction project in 2005, during his sophomore year of high school, as an outlet for his drug-induced, experimental sound collages. In 2011, Hildebrand hunkered down in his Toronto apartment, writing and recording what would later become his second Foxes in Fiction full-length album entitled Ontario Gothic. “The running theme throughout Ontario Gothic is how I picked up the pieces of my life after the death of my younger brother Drew in 2008, but each song references specific and discreet experiences,” says Hildebrand. “Personal loss and dealing with anxiety and depressive issues that I’ve struggled with my most of my life have played into my music and the way I work for as long as I can remember. Growing up gay on a small farm in rural Ontario was part of the reason that I got into writing and making music as a young kid, and the isolation and loneliness that I went through because of that helped to shape the conditions under which I usually make my best work.”’ — First Avenue
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uncertain the cycle of tears (moon) – the high priestess
‘uncertain is a music project started by artist, composer, poet, occultist, and androgyne Florian-Ayala Fauna in the WinterSolstice of 2007 during a dark night of the soul + Florian was later joined by vocalist and percussionist Felix Keigh in SummerSolstice of 2013 after revelations + visions through scrying with an obsidian black mirror. Their work seeks to collect, arrange, dissect, create, disfigure, beautify, set fire to, seed, and manipulate delicate, fragile sounds that vary from the organic to the unearthly. Sound sources frequently found in their music include natural field recordings, the noises of animals, processed acoustic instruments, synthesized and mangled electronics, and sounds found on decaying magnetic tapes.’ — collaged
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Pharmakon @ The Print Shop (MOMA PS1)
‘Unlike other experimental projects, Pharmakon does not improvise when performing or recording. She is concise and exact; each song/movement is linear with a clear trajectory. Perhaps more than any other style of music, noise is a genre almost exclusively dominated by male performers. Spin Magazine is apt to point out that her,“perfectionism might explain why her recordings are few and far between — a rarity in a scene where noise bros are want to puke out hour after endless hour of stoned basement jams into a limitless stream of limited-edition tapes. Her music may be as cuddly as a trepanning drill, but it’s also just as precise: She glowers in measured silence as often as she shrieks, and every serrated tone cuts straight to the bone, a carefully calibrated interplay between frequency and resistance.”’ — Sacred Bones
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Mai Mai Mai εὐφρόνη
‘Instantly, the UK “hauntology” scene of Demdike Stare and others springs to mind, but there is a playfulness behind Mai Mai Mai that many a British act seem to lack. Tracks bubble with wobbly analogue synthesiser lines and drones, consistently disturbed and unsettled by bursts of gristly noise. Beats are dropped casually into tracks, deployed sparingly but with subtle rhythmic force. Delta feels alchemical, a smartly distilled collection of sounds brewed together into a heady cocktail of genre-less, arrhythmic post-everything.’ — collaged
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Collarbones Too Much
‘Collarbones are a long distance Australian electronic pop/r&b; collaborative duo, comprised of Adelaide’s Travis Cook and Sydney’s Marcus Whale, beginning in 2007. Debut album Iconography was released in March 2011 on Two Bright Lakes, who also put out the followup, Die Young in 2012. “Last night, a few more Collarbones fans from overseas made fan accounts and spammed us dozens of times until we followed them. We like to joke around about being a boy band, but it doesn’t make it any less ridiculous when it actually happens.”– Collarbones.’ — collaged
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, nice. ** James, Hi, James. I’m like Jimmy Hoffa with my emails. I have read the new Levé. It’s great, of course. Short, linked works. Very, very good. If you like his writing, you’ll like it a lot, I think. It was his first book in France. And there are only those three books by him, although apparently he left some unpublished mss. along with a stated wish that they not be published, so I don’t know if they ever will be. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks so much again for the gp! Uh, now that you mention it, there was this inexplicable phenomenological event in the air at one point yesterday, huh. So that’s what it was trying to tell me. Cool riff on those restaurants. I feel pretty confident in saying that they must be far more interesting in theory than in practice, not that I won’t swoop in given my first proximity. I think a really great faux-haunted restaurant could definitely be devised and realized, by me, given the funding, but whether anyone who would want to eat there, I don’t know. Probably not. Of course I love what you say about your novel’s surface. I mean, wow, totally, what an amazing goal. Yeah, it sounds incredible. That didn’t sound like a mess at all. My novel is very exciting and very different and quite difficult to figure out how to write in the right way, and I’m pretty confident about it, but I haven’t been able to do more than dip in and scribble a bit for a couple of months. But as as soon as the film shooting is over, it’ll get the great majority of my attention. Thanks, T! ** Keaton, Yeah, I noticed you were away. I’m sorry that it involved a wreck. I didn’t actually get to read your thing yet because yesterday ended up being involved in a couple of sudden crises, but, as soon as I go out to the Paris suburbs this morning to buy a tent for our upcoming scene, I’ll get to savor it. Big time. Welcome back, pal! ** Jared, Hi. You would really and totally think so, wouldn’t you. It’s positively bizarre that there isn’t and, I think, never has been, given LA’s status as the world leader in Halloween spooky attractions. Oh, I would very much love either a Tory Dent Day, which, no, I’ve never done, or one on Arabic calligraphy, which is a really exciting idea and thing to imagine. Yeah, would be invaluable and very helpful if doing either of those would suit you. Thanks, J! You’re ruling. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Me too, about the not knowing what you’re eating, being a vegetarian and all. There’s an eat-in-the-dark restaurant here in Paris with blind waiters, which is a fun idea, but no way would I enter it. No, I haven’t been to many themed restaurants, for the above stated reason. Zac and I almost went to a robot themed one in Tokyo where robots serve your food and do a big robot show and stuff, but it ended up seeming too intense to do or something. Yay for the great and generous and multi-talented — my spellcheck just corrected ‘multi-talented’ into ‘mutilated’, which I think he might enjoy conceptually — Bill! Wait, and yay for the great, generous, not mutilated but multi-everything you in return! What a lovely exchange! Good about your excitement trumping your nervousness. I’m getting that way about the film shooting finally. Sucks that ‘Still Life’ sucks. I like the title. I’m anxious about the film shooting, for sure, but I’m feeling weirdly calm, and Zac’s very nervous since he’s the director and everything, so I’m trying to maintain my calm and exude it in his direction infectiously. Love from me. How was Tuesday? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I just googled ‘Dundee “weird restaurant”‘ but nothing came up, sadly, other than some restaurant what had ‘weird’ waiters, but not weird in an interesting way. Cool and fingers twistedly crossed about the post-work meeting with Andrew tomorrow! Or, wait, today! ** Matthew, Hi, Matthew! How really great to see you! Thanks about the thematic slide between the weekend post and yesterday’s. I guess if one finds experimental dark music horrific, and I know many around here do, ha ha, today might even qualify. Or at least the gif at the post’s head does. Hm, house horror, interesting. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything other than the obvious ‘House of Leaves’, which I wasn’t so into. My ‘Marbled Swarm’ has some of that, I guess. I’ll think, though. Everyone, Matthew asks for ‘some recommendations or directions on how to find some good books that experiment with house horror, like [Blake Butler’s] “There Is No Year”.’ Any ideas? Thank you! ** Turn porter, Hi. Yeah, Vilnius sounds really far away and exotic, but it’s only a couple of hours by plane from Paris. Europe is weird. Sorry about the reluctant composer but, yeah, you’ll find another. Wow, the shoot sounds like a lot of fun. You’re shooting the whole thing in three days? Yikes. We have three-day shoots for each of our scenes, and it has never been as much time as we really wanted. I will give progress updates when we start again. On Sunday, for the actual shooting. Thanks about that old dog ‘Closer’. You sound really up and excited. It’s really nice to hear, read, and feel! About half of those ‘haunted’ restaurants are still open, and, no, I haven’t been to any of them. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. That sounds nice: the wine and Seine thing. Wednesday should work. Do I have your email address? Hm, why don’t you send your phone number by email, and I’ll send you back mine and try to call you. Mine is: dcooperweb@gmail.com. I don’t know what ‘viber’ is, but I’ll ask someone. Cool, hopefully see you right away! ** Misanthrope, Oh, man, that’s so sad about LPS’s return to hell, or, well, hopefully not hell, but, yeah, it sounds hellish. Oh, man, it sucks to be young enough to have no real power over your life. I hated that. So Lesnar is still a monster? I guess that’s cool. I never liked Cena, not one little bit, so that’s cool except for if his neck is actually fucked up in the real world. I’m sure he’s nice. ** Steevee, Hi. ** Hyemin Kim, Your description of Bernanos’s style makes it sound like something I would like. It’s really nice that you like his work. It’s so exciting to find a writer one likes enough that his or her work becomes a future path. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Really, it surprises you that I did Space Mountain? Theme park rides and roller coasters are very prominent on my menu of things I love to do. Fire Island, cool. A bunch of people in my news feed on Facebook seem to be there right now. That German guy sounds like a tasteless jerk, yeah. The period just after the excitement of the initial publication is always really confusing and rough. Always. You have to find a way to transition into feeling the ongoing, back burner pleasure that the book is alive and mysteriously having a life, reaching people you don’t know by means you don’t know, leading to reactions that you’ll never hear. I like that, but it took me a while to learn to like it. ** Rewritedept, Hey! Nice to see you, man! It’s been a while! What’s been up? Frisco, cool. And for lovely reasons on both counts. Shooting starts on Sunday, and rehearsals start on Thursday. Actually, both of those are mostly really fun. The cray cray part is the build up and getting ready part. I’m good. There isn’t a whole lot going on that isn’t film-related. But I am starting to plan an upcoming trip to Iceland with Zac. That should be amazing. I hope your trip to No. Cal. eases the semi-crazy thing a ton. ** Right. Today you get another gig of music I’ve been listening to lately and really liking. Great stuff in there if you’re game to watch and listen. See you tomorrow.
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