Gig #79: Of late 22: Billy Lloyd, Mai Mai Mai, Sauna Youth, S. Araw “Trio” XI, Pure Ground, Chra, Damaged Bug, Ka/Dr. Yen Lo, Author & Punisher, Polar Inertia, Parade Ground, Voices from the Lake, Katie Dey

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Billy Lloyd Log In
‘”Log In” is about something that I’m obsessed with at the moment: the internet and the way it’s changed our lives. The way we see the world, the way we interact with it, with ourselves. It’s kind of a song about tumblr in a lot of ways. The internet gives us the power to create these digital worlds for ourselves that we can be the tiny gods of. We decide who sees us and what they see, what we see in response. You can be anything here. There’s not really a moral of the song, I honestly think the internet is the greatest thing in the world. I’ve personally used the internet to establish a comfortable-ness with my identity via experimenting with gender presentation in a way that I didn’t feel comfortable doing in real life. As I grow more comfortable looking a certain way in pictures online, it makes me more able to look like that in real life. Also arranging the choral harmonies and writing the puns in the middle 8 was the funnest thing ever.’ — Billy Lloyd

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Mai Mai Mai Bassae
‘Petra continues Italian noisemaker Mai Mai Mai’s inexorable downward spiral into the core of the aural unknown. Following a triptych of records marking out a topography of aural (extra)terrestrial terrain of the dark imagination, the one-sided album continues from 2013’s Theta (on Boring Machines) and last year’s Delta (Yerevan Tapes). The album starts with the ten minute behemoth ‘Bassae’, and the slow bleed of bleeping glitches plays out like a crackling radio connection from a space exploration probe back to earth. The transmission is intermittent, marred by extraneous interference, and lends itself an authority of found-sound immediacy and authenticity. This of course makes the slow-dread drone pulse that pounds through after the first minute mark a far more disturbing advancement – we are immediately put into a position of existential trepidation, lent weight from prior knowledge of fetishised sci-fi horror and claustrophobic chest-tightening tension. The concentration of these combative synthetic noises ebbs and flows though, just as if the frequency of the transmission is faltering, before coming into sharp focus, the intensity ratcheted, the rhythms of the pulse and the heart lurching further forward into the chest.’ — The Quietus

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Sauna Youth New Fear (live)
‘Since the release of their first LP Dreamlands in 2012, Richard Phoenix, Jen Calleja, Lindsay Corstorphine and Christopher Murphy have become, as proclaimed by the group themselves, the “ultimate form” of Sauna Youth. Having developed a distaste with modern life and the “technology age” as we know it, the group return with their second record and a point to make. Distractions is a tense and utterly incensed record, a controlled racket that doesn’t hang around for a second longer than it needs to. ‘Transmitters’ is a bruising combination of rolling percussion and Corstorphine’s stabbing discords, Phoenix and Calleja providing riled statements of vehemence and discontent. ‘Monotony’ rallies a repetitive notion into an antagonistic shot at mundanity, while the electric bass progression that builds into ‘Modern Living’ is stripped bare in its production and is left feeling especially vibrant for it. Each track is an unrelenting blur of angular punk, using creative ability as a tool for delivering suitably vital expression.’ — DIY

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S. Araw “Trio” XI Processional
‘S. Araw “Trio” XI is a new configuration of the Sun Araw Band, the live-action collaborative branch of Sun Araw. Over the course of several studio dates in Hollywood, California, “Trio” players Cameron Stallones, Alex Gray, and Mitchell Brown (with no prior intentions of doing any such thing) successfully planted a garden of “non-dimensional” objects, not only spontaneously generating these objects but also mastering their nurture and cultivation. And You Can Too! Gazebo Effect is a 2xLP nocturnal stroll into the depths of the garden, its upper lawns and outbuildings. The listener is advised that as the objects have been “set growing” their location at any given time is difficult to predict. The Garden cannot be exited by the path it is entered, the angles involved being extremely precise. These factors (and others) clearly illustrate the value for oneself (and others) in the building of an observational structure: The Gazebo. However, it must be understood that the presence of this structure has a transformative effect on The Garden Itself.’ — Drag City

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Pure Ground War in Every House (live)
‘Industrial music is harsh, stark, and hateful, and Pure Ground are no exception. The Los Angeles duo has been the personification of austere dirges and grating dins since 2012, with its first album Daylight and Protection being as desolate, ugly, and misanthropic as anything belonging to the genre’s unholy canon. Yet as laudably dank and dismal as their previous cassettes have been, the band has always offered more than superficial aggression and enmity. Take Standard of Living. It’s not just that their second album is blighted by enough coarse synths and barked vocals to create an inhospitable atmosphere, but that they cohere these bleak elements into a rejection of the modern world and its falsity. From the introductory prowling of “Second Skin” through to the strained bursts of “Tides,” G. Holger and J. Short employ an ascetic minimalism that functions as a conscious rejection of the superficial adornments and “advances” of the 21st century.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Chra Soca Valley
‘Operating out of Vienna, Christina Nemec has many strings to her bow at presents, including membership in recent Blackest Ever Black signings Shampoo Boy and roots in obscure Austrian industrial band Bray. Such associations all make perfect sense when listening to her new album as Chra, which has emerged in Editions Mego. Empty Airports is a fittingly desolate place where submerged rhythmic pulses and distant static flirt with occasional whispers of melody but largely echo out into a vast and very palpable nothingness. It’s no mean feat to conjure up such spaces with sound, and Nemec does a wonderful job of it on this release.’ — Juno

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Damaged Bug Cough Pills
‘John Dwyer has a surprise… While everyone eagerly anticipates the next Oh Sees record, he’s been working tirelessly in his synth laboratory, hand-crafting a followup to last year’s neon-noir Damaged Bug debut—one that shakes up the snow globe considerably. If Hubba Bubba was a brush with a robotic exoskeleton on deep-space patrol, Cold Hot Plumbs visits the alien world that sent it into the cosmos. Lush, textural and psychedelic, the songs breathe with a otherworldly sadness and heart. Barbed, sophisticated arrangements flower in every direction. The vintage-perfect sound palette would be window dressing if not for the songs themselves: fresh, vital, and above all catchier than the flu. Cold Hot Plumbs is a strange, beautiful, and oddly infectious addition to Dwyer’s oeuvre, and not one to be missed.’ — Mid-Heaven

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Ka/Dr. Yen Lo Day 3
‘Days With Dr. Yen Lo is a work of art that feels fully realized on every level, from the Bigavelian harmonization of each seamlessly stacked Ka ad lib to the mix-mastery of each precisely-pitched Preservation sample. This contrasts notably from Ka’s Grief Pedigree, which, though also best understood and experienced as a complete work, is still one with an exposed skeleton. As Aesop Rock wrote of the sophomore album, “The record sounds like a guy going through old records in his room and piecing together eerie loops to zone out to. You can really hear the process in there as much as you can hear the finished product…” What Days With Dr. Yen Lo may lack in transparency it gains in cohesion and solidity. (This also sets it apart from Night’s Gambit, which though more sonically diverse than Grief Pedigree, feels conceptually loose by comparison.) Here, there are no cracks in Ka’s iron works. His is a well-oiled killing machine.’ — Samuel Diamond

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Author & Punisher Shame
‘After he wrote The Art of Noise, Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo built his own noise machines in an attempt to realize his vision. He called his creations intonarumori, or ‘noisemakers.’ Each of Russolo’s 27 noisemakers was essentially a variation on the original—a wooden box and amplifying horn equipped with a wheel, which could be rotated with a large handle. The wheel then fucked with a string attached to a drum that worked as an acoustic resonator, producing drones that hum like a 727 engine, and anxiety-inducing grinding similar to the sound of a bike rim rolling across concrete. In a lot of ways, Russolo’s noisemakers can be seen as prototypes for Author & Punisher’s drone machines. The progression of Author & Punisher can be traced by the development of his machines. The Painted Army LP (2005) and Warcry EP (2007), both recorded while Shone was getting his MFA in sculpture, combine plodding electronic percussion and spectral layers of guitars and keys, like Nine Inch Nails channeling Godflesh. But then Shone built the first of his drone machines—a bizarre throttle system that produces bowel loosening sub-bass frequencies. The throttles push back as Shone tries to control them, giving concrete form to ideas about our push-pull relationship with technology. Soon afterward, he also built his sadistic percussion device, the linear actuator.’ — Noisey

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Polar Inertia Vertical Ice
‘French men-of-mystery Polar Inertia describe themselves as a “blurry techno entity”. They’re at their shape-shifting best on Kinematic Optics, a double vinyl excursion that contains their first original material since 2012. They set their stall out with the foreboding, cinematic ambience of the title track (built, incidentally, around an extensive spoken word vocal), before delivering an epic chunk of rolling industrial techno (“Floating Away Fire”). There’s a mournful, melancholic feel to the deep techno throbber “Vertical Ice”, while “Hell Frozen Over” is fittingly dark and murky. The second 12″ contains a recording of previous live performance “Can We See Well Enough To Move On?” in its entirety, with droning textures and glacial electronics guaranteeing a spine-chilling mood.’ — Deep’a & Biri

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Parade Ground Moans
‘Parade Ground first appeared on the Nationale Rockmeeting LP in 1982, striking straight to the heart with the passionate plea “I Shut My Eyes.” Later that year the brothers met Daniel B. and Patrick Codenys of Front 242 beginning a collaborative partnership that continues to present day. In 1983 they released their debut 3-song 7” EP Moan On The Sly on the New Dance label, musically a hybrid of Joy Division and Fad Gadget. 1984 brought further explorations into the world of electronic body music with the 3-song Man In A Trance EP and 2 tracks on the live concert compilation Mask Promotion both records released on Front 242′s Mask Music label. The following year the single Took Advantage/Moral Support 12” was released incorporating then, state-of-the-art modular synthesizers programmed by Daniel B. and back-up vocals from Flo Sullivan (A Formal Sigh, Shiny Two Shiny). Then in 1987 the brothers collaborated with Colin Newman of British post-punk band Wire, who produced and lent his vocals, guitars and keyboards to two songs (“Moans“/”Action Replay”) while Daniel B. produced flipside “Gold Rush” on the Dual Perspective EP that stands alongside 80s anthems from Tears for Fears, Modern English, Echo & The Bunnymen. Finally in 1988 their debut album Cut Up was released on Play It Again Sam Records and featured the singles Strange World and Hollywood.’ — Dark Entries

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Voices From The Lake Scintille
‘Sometimes soft echoes of sirenic voices are heard – the only remnants of human traces in these spaces that have suspended time, where smooth silky textures are being channeled into fractal structures that induce a state of transcendence. The haptic quality of their sound is adding up to a sonic matrix of metaphysic imaginary that is provoked by gentle glides and dynamic beat patterns of almost tribalistic quality. Dunked in a bath of dark fluid, sometimes washed away at the shores of Kosmische – VFTL’s tunes are not scared to seduce us into a condition of haziness, culminating in a cover of Paolo Conte’s ‚Max’ which is turned into a dazzling sample of sweet, dreamy melancholia. With this release Voices From The Lake succeed again in strengthening their position as one of todays most refined ambient techno producers.’ — Editions Mego

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Katie Dey Unkillable
‘The title of Katie Dey’s new album seems to mean so little, but actually says quite a lot. Trying to decipher the Melbourne artist’s record title recalls the modern way of dealing with frustration by frantically or listlessly slamming your fingers down on a keyboard just to see something, anything, happen on the screen. The whole thing first feels random, but the gaggle of text on the screen always seems to look something like it did the last time; all the letters seem to fit together in a way that’s hard to explain. Dey remains an elusive figure, at least in terms of her presence on the internet; no Facebook page, 185 tweets, and a what seems to be a very full ask box on Tumblr. The 20-minute album works within a framework that’s both sequenced and arbitrary. With no two songs that sound alike, asdfasdf manages to seamlessly transition between ideas making it 20 minutes of impossibly palpable bliss.’ — Impose

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p.s. Hey. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Howdy, Jeff. Glad you liked the photos. It’s been a bit since I read ‘Practicalities’, but I remember liking it quite a bit, yes. Let me know how you find it.
Oh, I’ll email or FB you my address. Thanks! I’d like to read her book, for sure. My back is much improved and nearly all better, thanks, and I’ll get an update on the ventriloquist’s health today. Fingers very crossed. ** David Ehrenstein, Would make sense. Thanks a lot for the link to the Robert Frank and young collaborator thing! I’ll indulge today. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Google spellcheck just corrected your name to Tosh Bermuda. Back problems suck, for sure. I’ve had a lifetime to come to peace with mine, but I haven’t. It’s doing better today, thank you. The high heat was surreal. Paris is famous-ish for its super mild summers, so getting upper 90s temps created a national crisis. It’s cooler-ish today so far. I greatly look forward to your Detroit writings, sir. Oh, there was one yesterday? I’ll check back. ** Steevee, How are your eyes as of today? No, it’s very rare that even very wealthy Parisians have air-conditioning in their homes and/or apartments. You just have to hope your place has cross-ventilation, and luckily mine does, That helped a little. I have a friend who is, or, at least, was into Amara Touré. She played me some at some point. It seemed very impressive. Huh. I’ll revisit. Thank you, sir. ** Bill, Hi. I’m pretty certain that the Hamburg shows are still a go, but I’ll have a phone meeting with Gisele today to find out for sure. Yes, ‘stomach speaking’, weird, right? The ventriloquists we’re working with say that’s right, and that it’s all about their stomachs. Strange. Who played at the festival? Punk bands from the past? Any names? I hope it was fun. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, that’s interesting., When I was putting together the Odermatt post, I kept seeing references to that book. It looks kind of amazing. I’ll see if it’s in the art/photography book stores here. Thanks! ** Sypha, Welcome back! It sounds to have been an eventful, chock-full vacation. Funny how little nature itself was in your report. I can relate to that. Mini-golf! I miss it. There are about five mini-golf courses in all of France, and at least four of them are boring, flat-as-pancake courses. There’s one in Paris that’s all white and kind of weird looking that I keep meaning to try out. ** H, Hi. Glad you liked it! Oh, thank you about the posts. That’s super interesting and very kind too. Huh. I haven’t read Thoreau since I was assigned Thoreau in high school, which is really pretty weird and neglectful of me. I’ve never even heard of ‘The Illustrated’. What a nice title. I’ll look into it. Thanks a lot! ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh. Good guess, man, because I did indeed find the first part pretty cool, and quite possibly even for the reason you suggest. I’m feeling better. How are you, my man? ** Kyler, Happy for you that the hot dog stand scooched the banjo band out of sight. And even out of sound? ** Kier, Hi, Tinkierbell! I think the ventriloquist will be okay. I think it was a mild one, but I’ll find out where he and his heart are at today. My back steadily improves, and I’m post-pain killers now and only a little creaky. I think I’ve heard of Frida Hansen. I can’t remember the stuff itself though. The ‘Terminator’ film seems to be getting so trashed. I want to see it, but I think I’ll wait for an overseas plane situation. I still haven’t even seen ‘Jurassic’. Very cool about the hanging with the hickey-gifting person today. Was it fun for the obvious or not so obvious reason? My weekend was pretty blah due to back protection measures. It was horribly hot on Saturday. Like French hell, ugh, but then yesterday the temp swooped down into almost okay, and, thus far, today seems like yesterday’s twin. I didn’t see art ‘cos it was too hot on Saturday to even think about using the metro, and yesterday got away from me. But Z. and I might hit Palais de Tokyo today. There’s some installation there where they turned part of the museum into a river, and they give you a row boat, and you row yourself down the river while holographic beings do something to you. That sounds like a must. I mostly just hung out at home all weekend, sweated, and worked on stuff. It was fine-ish. I’ll try to perk my day up today, and how was yours, maestro? ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Such a great response to the photos. You should really patent your intelligence and imagination, if you haven’t already. How are you? What’s the most exciting thing that is currently destined to happen for/with you within the next foreseeable days? ** If I’m not mistaken, we’re done for the day. I made a gig of some music I’ve been into recently. You are more than welcome to visit it and take away anything that catches your ear into your own current arsenal of listening items. See you tomorrow.