Haino Keiji, Brötzmann Peter, Jim O'Rourke - (2015) Two City Blues 2 CD

 

 Trost Records ‎– TR 128

Two City Blues 2 draws together three musicians of outstanding class: Keiji Haino is a Japanese vocalist and guitarist who has worked in a range of genres and with Derek Bailey, John Zorn and Fred Firth, to name just a few. Jim O’Rourke is a composer and guitarist who has made an impact on the U.S. improvisation scene. He has played with, amongst many others, Mats Gustaffson, Derek Bailey and Thurston Moore. Finally, Peter Brotzmann needs little introduction and remains one of the key players of improvisational music.

There are just two tracks listed on Two City Blues 2 (due January 22, 2015 via Trost), and they provide sections in which the themes are developed, stretched and thrown back and forth between the musicians. The first section, “Two City Blues,” starts off with recurrent themes, all deceptively calm. Each musician trials riffs and themes, largely set by the saxophone of Brotzmann before they merge and the piece develops. At times, the guitar sounds countrified and at others, metallic and eerie.

Over this, Peter Brotzmann instills order to some degree with repeated riffs and then, just when you get a little comfortable — about two minutes in — the voice of Haino screeches over the top of the instruments like a banshee. After a few wails and gut-wrenching, however the voice becomes as much part of the musical development as the instruments. Before long, all players are enmeshed in a bizarre interaction involving rapid thrumming on the guitar, manic overplaying by Brotzmann and occasional vocal interjection by Haino.

The middle section is largely led by Peter Brotzmann, soloing over the guitar and sometimes alone with ethereal echoes in the background. The use of the shamisen, a three-stringed Japanese instrument, and the Taragota both enrich the sounds — even as Haino’s voice acts as the backboard in many sections. There is a lovely talking section between sax and voice, as Peter Brotzmann creates his now-standard “pic-a-pic” voice, making the sax sound like Mr. Punch on a good day even as Haino continues interspersing vocals. By this time, the latter have developed into almost recognizable tunes. Then, of course, “Two City Blues” develops further and a maelstrom of sound is created using all instruments and a certain amount of electronic tweaking.

Part 2 is titled “One Fine Day,” and starts with a Peter Brotzmann solo interspersed with guitar. This develops into a free-for-all section, led by the sax and punctuated with Brotzmann’s characteristic long notes — which introduce a tag onto which the others hold and fly. Beautifully developed, this is short at just over six minutes but very, very sweet.

Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, Oren Ambarchi - (2013) まだ 暖かい内に この今に 全ての謎を 注ぎ込んでしまおう = Now While It's Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery

 

Medama Records ‎– mr04

Like the meme says, punctuation saves lives; likewise, crediting order clues you to process. The alphabetical name order on this trio’s first album, Tina Formosa, implied a non-hierarchical collaboration, and the sound-blending they sustained during that record’s instrumental passages bore this out. But let’s face it -- anytime Keiji Haino sings, he’s king, and he’s definitely first among equals throughout Imikuzushi.

The trio’s third annual collaboration is, once more, excerpted from a live performance in Japan. But instead of prepared pianos and electronics, they used the primary colors of rock: guitar, bass and drums. And while any combo that lets Haino’s sobbing, roaring, terrifying voice into the mix can never be just a rock band, these guys rock out quite formidably.

Whether your favorite power trio is the Minutemen or ZZ Top, part of what makes ’em great is their ability to simultaneously exploit the format’s simplicity and transcend its limitations. These guys do both. Each knows exactly what is required of his instrument. O’Rourke’s bass is often massive and monolithic; he spends most of the first piece – entitled “still unable to throw off that teaching a heart left abandoned unable to get inside that empty space nerves freezing that unconcealed sadness I am still unable to fully embrace” -- pounding out one note with unwavering precision and absolute brutality. But he also delivers gently exquisite counterpoint to Haino’s intricate, almost harpsichord-like guitar on the third piece, “invited in practically drawn in by something facing the exit of this hiding place who is it? that went in coming around again the same as before who is it?” Ambarchi’s drumming veers between precise beats and big clouds of cymbal smashing, but it’s always propulsive, and his shifts of attack exercise the same mastery of long-form dynamics as his recent, rigorously constructed solo album, Audience Of One.

O’Rourke and Ambarchi don’t always play it straight, though. Much of the enormous tension on “still unable…” comes from their careful shifts in and out of synch, which they manage and sustain with exacting discipline. And if you’ve been waiting for Haino to get his rock-god ya-yas out, you’re in luck here; there are plenty of stark, single-note solos blowing through this joint like dust devils down a ghost town’s widest thoroughfare. Turn the corner and they blossom into chords that contain orchestras. Whether it’s the djinn unleashed by massive volume or simply judicious marshaling of pedals, Haino usually seems to have several things happening at once inside every down stroke. He commands everything about him like some thunderbolt-wielding god atop a mountain, abetted by pitiless angels who know that their power comes from keeping him at the peak.

Keiji Haino / Jim O'Rourke / Oren Ambarchi - (2015) ここに 与えられた この身体 全部 使い切てやる という者の お茶の 時間 = Tea Time For Those Determined To Completely Exhaust Every Bit Of This Body They've Been Given LP

 

Medama Records ‎– mr06

"At this point, it can justifiably be said that Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi have become one of the leading groups in experimental music. This, their sixth release, presents the entire second set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the first set is available on Black Truffle as Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen). While the first set of the evening saw the trio branching out into new instrumental configurations, here they return to their signature line-up of guitar, bass and drums. The LP begins abruptly, with one of the finest performances by the trio captured on record thus far already in full swing. Throughout the course of this 12-minute piece, O'Rourke and Ambarchi lay down a thudding, meterless pulse, the impossible midway point of Milford Graves and motorik Krautrock, over which Haino unfurls a number of distinct strategies developed in his work since the 1980s: formless blurs of reverb-drenched guitar noise, looped pointillist fragments and wandering, dissonant lines obscured in clouds of distortion. Continuing Haino's habit of naming albums with phrases that seem to obliquely comment on the music they contain, it could definitely be said that this is music made by three people 'determined to completely exhaust every bit of this body they've been given.' Showing the trio at new heights, this track carries on in the spirit of some of Haino's greatest work: music made with the ingredients of rock that somehow manages to sidestep all of its forms and traditions while retaining and amplifying its fundamental power. If this track alone lays to rest concerns about whether the trio has exhausted the guitar/bass/drums format, the remainder of the record serves as a demonstration of the multitude of possibilities still available for their continued exploration. The three are now so in-tune with one another that almost anything can be integrated into their improvisations: in the slow-burning second piece, O'Rourke's heavily effected bass wanders from anti-music thuds to an almost funky passage with Ambarchi sounding not unlike Buddy Miles circa Hendrix's Band of Gypsys -- it bespeaks the hours of listening to fusion and classic rock that continue to form an important part of O'Rourke and Ambarchi's musical personalities. The final piece is a continuous side-long performance that moves through a number of discrete episodes, from vocal and flute solos by Haino delicately accompanied by O'Rourke's sparse bass and Ambarchi's sizzling cymbals, to a final stumbling dirge over which Haino unleashes a stunning torrent of in-the-red guitar skree." --Francis Plagne; Design by Stephen O'Malley with high quality live shots by Ujin Matsuo and stunning artwork by Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug.

Jim O'Rourke, Keiji Haino & Oren Ambarchi - (2017) This Dazzling, Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go? 2xLP

 

Medama Records ‎– mr08

Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label coughs up the eighth live document of his nonpareil trio with the legendary Keiji Haino and Jim O’Rourke. All considered, these guys are pretty much the tightest/loosest avant instrumental group out there right now, blessed with a time-and-space bending dexterity that allows them to fuse some half century of research in free jazz, out rock and kosmiche electronics into blinding new forms.

On the A-side they prowl like a pack of predatory animals hunting down a noble but tired old prey, methodically and precisely attacking and breaking down the lumbering body of rock music in an increasingly ferocious whirlwind of fanged guitar slash and tearout percussion until they’re bathing a strangely tranquil bloodbath. With the B-side they lock into a martial distortion drill around Ambarchi’s steady, Wold-like snares rolls and sky-collapsing harmonics with stoically unrelenting force.

Side C brings the trio at their most abstract, moving from near silence, perforated only by the shivering chimes of toy piano, spookily signing into he ether where Haino exclaims in English from somewhere deep in the unfathomable mix, and O’Rourke petrifies the air with ungodly, alien EMS synth voices that speak to us in the uncanniest way. All change again on Side D, as they broach the 4th wold thru some back door entrance, scanning its undergrowth with Haino’s flute, vox and guitar urged on by pouring tribal toms until hey lay waste to the scene with pure guitar napalm.  

Jim O'Rourke, Keiji Haino & Oren Ambarchi - (2014) ただ美しく溶けてしまいたいのに まだまだ満ち足りていないから まだ見えてないはずの ほうが愛おしく 思えてしまう = Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away Is It A Lack Of Contentment That Stirs Affection For Those Things Said To Be As Of Yet Unseen LP

 

 Medama Records ‎– mr05

"Begun as a one-off collaboration in 2009, the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi has now become a solid working group, refining its craft through a series of annual concerts at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe. Much of their recorded work has focused on their intense, ritualistic take on the rock power trio of electric guitar, bass and drums. Presenting the entire first set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the second set will follow on Black Truffle later this year), Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen is their fifth release and blows the instrumental palette wide open for a single continuous piece focused on acoustic strings, synth, flute and percussion. Featuring one of Haino's most delicate and moving recorded vocal performances, the opening section of the record takes the form of a spare duet between O'Rourke's 12-string acoustic guitar and Haino's kantele (a Finnish variant of the dulcimer), behind which Ambarchi provides a hovering backdrop of wine glass tones. While on previous releases the listener has often sensed that Haino was firmly in the driver's seat, here O'Rourke takes center stage with an acoustic guitar performance that takes the lyricism of John Abercrombie or Ralph Towner and refracts it through the free improvisation tradition of his mentors Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser. The atmosphere of meditative, abstracted song is reminiscent of some of Haino's greatest recordings, such as the legendary Live in the First Year of the Heisei volumes recorded with Kan Mikami. After this stunningly beautiful opening sequence, the performance moves organically through a number of episodes, including a dramatic central passage in which Haino moves to synth and drum machine, crafting a current of raw electricity that unfurls slowly over the gently pulsing foundations of Ambarchi's cymbals and builds to heights of manic intensity. When Haino later turns to wooden flute, Ambarchi answers him with nimble hand-drummed percussion in a passage that calls to mind Don Cherry's liberated combination of free-jazz improvisation and non-Western musics. The trio's move away from the power trio dynamic bespeaks a risk-taking and questing spirit that refuses to be satisfied with repeating past glories, and yet the organic, immersive flow of this single improvisation attests to the intuitive bond that has formed between them over the last five years. Exuding the signature mystery and emotion of Haino's greatest works, this release is perhaps the strongest statement yet from this acclaimed trio, and holds out a tantalizing promise for everyone hooked on their continuing exploration of 'those things said to be as of yet unseen.'

Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, Oren Ambarchi - (2019) In the past only geniuses were capable of staging the perfect crime (also known as a revolution) Today anybody can accomplish their aims with the push of the button

Medama Records ‎– 009

For its 50th release, Black Truffle presents the ninth album from one of the label’s core ensembles, the power trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi. Drawn from a November 2015 performance at Tokyo’s now-defunct SuperDeluxe, the record’s opening piece drops us immediately into the maelstrom, abruptly cutting into an extended episode of Ambarchi’s pummeling drums, O’Rourke’s fuzzed-out six-string bass, and Haino’s roaring guitar and electronics. Eventually settling into a hypnotic bass and drum groove over which Haino unleashes some almost Ray Russell-eque skittering atonal screech, these opening 13 minutes act as a potent reminder of the trio’s power.
Alongside showcasing the steady development of a unique language for the guitar-bass-drums power trio, the group’s succession of releases over the last decade has demonstrated a constant experimentation with new instruments, which continues here with O’Rourke use of Hammond organ (played at the same time as his roaming, sometimes knotty basslines). On the album’s second piece, the organ plays a key role, furnishing a harmonically rich shimmer over O’Rourke’s angular six-string bass chords, Haino’s distant, chirping electronics and Ambarchi’s crisp cymbal work; arriving somewhere halfway between Albert Marcoeur and Terje Rypdal, this piece is undoubtedly a highlight in the trio’s catalog so far.
The second and third sides are slow-burning, multi-part epics that range from spacious reflection to furious tumult. Where the trio’s previous double-LP set — This Dazzling, Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go? (BT 030LP, 2017) — was primarily instrumental in focus, here you find Haino’s voice taking the spotlight on the expansive third side, intoning, wailing. and exhorting in Japanese and English over a backdrop that moves from hushed bass and organ atmospherics to rolling toms and cymbal crashes before arriving at an ecstatic finale of searing guitar, tumbling drums and reverb-saturated bass. The fourth side returns to the hypnotic grooves of the opening piece, fixing on a relentless riff and riding it into oblivion under Haino’s roaming psychedelic soloing and jagged chordal slashes.

Tracklist
1. In the past only geniuses were capable of staging the perfect crime (also known as a revolution) Today anybody can accomplish their aims with the push of the button Part 1 (13:49)
2. Decorously decorously decorously decorously decorously Decorously decorously decorously decorously decorously To make something beautiful and then to smash it decorously (09:45)
3. Head-on collision If it still has bones it shall move forward (which is different to progress) (19:01)
4. In the past only geniuses were capable of staging the perfect crime (also known as a revolution) Today anybody can accomplish their aims with the push of the button Part 2 (17:53)
5. I always walk around with a "tranquil void" in my pocket one that I may pull out at any given moment (17:01)

Total length: 1:17:29

Jim O'Rourke - (2012) Old News #7 2xLP

 

Editions Mego ‎– Old News #7

Side One & Two recorded 96-97 Steamroom, Chicago

Side Three recorded live in Nagoya at Tokuzo April,2011.
Thanks to Carlos Giffoni

Side Four recorded 93-94.
Originally released on These Records. Thanks to Andrew & Howard Jacques

More archival works from Jim O’Rourke seeing the light of day.

‘Welcome To The Django’ is 2 sided mid 90s excursion of O’Roukes first exeperiments with a Serrge modular system.

‘Natural Born Killers’ is a recent live jam recorded in Nagoya.

‘Tacere Fas’ is legendary early 90s piece finally available again. Orginally appearing on the compilation ‘Unentitled’ (THESE 011CD), released by These Records in 1994.

Jim O'Rourke - (2020) Shutting Down Here

 

Portraits GRM ‎– SPGRM 001

ReShutting Down Here is a special work. Symbolically, it covers a period of thirty years, between two visits by Jim O'Rourke to the GRM, the first, as a young man fascinated by the institution and his repertoire, the second, as an accomplished musician, influential and imbued with an aura of mystery. Shutting Down Here is a piece shaped like an universe, a heterogeneous world in which collides the multiple musical facets of Jim O'Rourke: instrumental writing, field recordings, electronic textures and cybernetic becomings, dynamic spaces, harmonic spaces, silent spans . This variety of approach, strangely, does not in any way weaken the coherence of the whole and this is the talent of Jim O'Rourke, a talent, properly speaking, of composition, where all the sound elements compete and participate to stakes that exceed them and of a common destiny, that is to say of an apparition.

Sote - (2020) Parallel Persia Remixes

 

  Diagonal ‎– DIAG057

Cutting edge innovators Rashad Becker and Mark Fell re-work material from Sote’s extraordinary ‘Parallel Persia’ album alongside a killer non-album track by Ata Ebtekar aka Sote himself. Highly recommended if yr into the complex tunings and arrhythmic geometry of Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Autechre, Xenakis...

Last year’s ‘Paralell Persia’ album took the trajectory of his preceding ‘Hardcore Sounds From Tehran’ (2016) and ‘Sacred Horror In Design’ (2017) to thrilling new heights for Diagonal. Turning traditional instrumental music inside-out with computers and modular synths, he arrived at a thrilling mix of sound that stood out as one of the year’s most original and striking releases.

Wrapped around the incendiary core of ‘Artificial Neutrality’ which features Pouya Damadi’s Tar and Arash Bolouri’s Santour sculpted into fiery folk futurism by Sote, the remixes by celebrated mastering engineer and improvising composer Rashad Becker and minimalist rhythmatist Mark Fell exert incredible new spins on Sote’s originals that remain faithful to the material in their inimitable styles.

Rashad Becker’s Dramatic Reenactment of ‘Pseudo Scholastic’ combs and curdles the original into 7 segmented minutes of squirming tones and melted rhythms that, through twists and turns, come to recall Korean classical court music and Florian Hecker as much as they recall the original.

Mark Fell, meanwhile, impresses with his quadruply extended 20 minute Parallel Yorkshire mutation of ‘Modality Transporter’, where he unravels its syncopated flex in endless permutations of laser-guided pulse drops, puckered strings and choral stabs that come to sound like Autechre letting off fireworks at a Dariush Dolat-Shahi show.

Celer + Forest Management - (2018) Landmarks

 

Constellation Tatsu ‎– PURR 0089 

Collaborating for the first time, Will Long and John Daniel combine their methods using tape machines, loops, and computers to score a reimagining of Peter Weir's film and Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast". Sourcing inspiration from a view of the film and book as a historical pendulum, the musicians found that these reinterpretations left them nostalgic for a different time, something that's only partly imagined, and without the defined predictions about the life cycles of mass culture based on our limited understanding of current events.

Shira Legmann, Michael Pisaro - (2019) Barricades

 

Elsewhere – elsewhere 009

This album contains LA-based composer Michael Pisaro's recent composition 'Barricades,' a 63-minute piece for piano and electronics. Consisting of thirteen studies (piano pieces, some with electronics) and two electronic interludes, the piece is performed by Israel-based pianist Shira Legmann, with Pisaro on electronics.

"Barricades has a distant but decisive relationship to the keyboard music of Louis and François Couperin. The title refers to 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' by François Couperin – and to the technique of overlapping, interlocking voices, creating a thicket or web-like texture. I have loved the music of the Couperins since college, but it was when Shira sent me some of her favorite music to play, and 'Les Barricades Mystérieuses' was among the scores, that the idea for this piece began to crystallize. The process of writing and working on the piece with Shira was one of watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel." (Michael Pisaro)

Legmann's clean, supple yet solid piano sounds, employing a wide dynamic range, add a sense of organic life to the composition. Her whispery nuances and mysterious atmosphere, intertwining with Pisaro's underlying sine tones, create a compelling balance between coolness and emotion, distance and closeness, and result in a tranquil yet captivating contemporary work with an echo of the French Baroque.

Long Distance Poison - (2020) Technical Mentality CS

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 101 

Operating as Long Distance Poison, Nathan Cearley and Erica Bradbury manipulate modular and analogue synths into sustained drone explorations lasting just a few ticks shy of 20 minutes per track. Steadily releasing albums since the 2010s, Long Distance Poison combine a post-rock ethos with ambient drones and sequenced algorithms.

Technical Mentality is an affirmation of much of their previous work. The tracks manoeuvre from glassy sci-fi soundscapes to gritty machine electronics, all designed to suck out any free quiet space from our consciousness. Fans of ambient drone will appreciate the mostly relentless atonal forms that are subtly interrupted by harmonic complements.

In particular, "Sunset In a Server" simulates the inner workings of the machines that seemingly run our lives. The track finishes with a crescendo of harmonic content and sustained bell notes, only to return to the gloomy hum of electronic rpms.

Technical Mentality unfolds like a live improvisational performance. For the most part, the textures happily guzzle up frequencies, but remain fairly pleasant to the ear. There are a few moments where the longevity and amplitude of the notes seem almost unbearable, but noise and drone fans might just be looking for that kind of cerebral assault.

Christoph Waelkens - (2020) New England Digital

 

Vlek ‎– VLEK30 

New England Digital is proudly digital, containing 6 very different sound vignettes ranging from ‘style brisé’ FM harpsichord to abstract techno.
At times dreamlike and detached but never without solid harmonic or rhythmical interest, New England Digital evokes scenes from New England pastoral life during the early settlement years.

Christoph Waelkens is a Brussels based musician with a background in both classical and electronic music.

All music is recorded with the Yamaha TG77, Waldorf XT synthesizers and Emu Emax sampler.

Fly Pan Am - (2019) C'est ça CD

 

Constellation ‎– CST147 

C'est ça marks the return of Montréal avant-rock quartet Fly Pan Am, who released an acclaimed series of albums in Constellation's early years, from 1999-2004. The band’s unique and heady collision of motorik repetition, shoegaze maximalism, punk skronk, tape- and electronic-based interventions and audio sabotage, garnered them a cult following among fans of audaciously deconstructed post-rock.

Fly Pan Am quietly reunited in late 2017 for purely artistic reasons (needless to say), to explore making new music together after more than a decade spent in pursuit of separate sonic adventures. Within weeks, it was clear the band was firing on all cylinders again, brimming with electricity and eager to pick up where they’d left off with their last album N’écoutez pas back in 2004: pushing further into full-spectrum intersections of noise pop, post-punk, power electronics and musique concrète, while continuing to incorporate shrouded, textural vocals as alternately melodic and visceral components.

C'est ça is a brilliant return to form for Fly Pan Am – an album of renewed vitality and experimentation where rock structures underpinned by J.S. Truchy’s trademark rapid-fire bass and Félix Morel’s disciplined, ascetic drumming are submerged beneath waves of processed guitar by Roger Tellier-Craig and Jonathan Parant, with fluorescent noise treatments and sonic vandalisms wrought by all four. “Distance Dealer”, “Each Ether” and “Interface Your Shattered Dreams” nod to important influences like MBV and Hüsker Dü, while collapsing into/out of themselves in various ways. “One Hit Wonder”, “Bleeding Decay” and “Discreet Channeling” vault some of Fly Pan Am’s earliest reference points into the present: namely, the intrepid proto-Kosmiche of This Heat and Can, and later style-adjacent torchbearers like Boredoms, Flying Saucer Attack and Trans Am.

But Fly Pan Am have always and reliably been much more than the sum of their influences and of their own constituent parts. C’est ca is terrific slab of restless, conceptual, psych-cosmic noise rock that could come from no other band, forged by four musicians with long histories both together and apart. Following years of sonic exploration in all sorts of other projects and guises, whether in rock/punk/pop groups like Pas Chic Chic, Feu Thérèse, Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche and Panopticon Eyelids (to name just a few) or through a wide range of experimental electronic and audio-art projects – including Roger Tellier Craig and J.S. Truchy each with solo releases on Root Strata, and Truchy having run the Los Discos Enfantasmes label for several years – Fly Pan Am have reconvened with all four original members and made a new record sparkling with the creative buzz of lifelong artistic intensity, dialogue and friendship.

Ikuro Takahashi - (2019) しりえないものとずっと

 

An'archives ‎– [An'16]

Legendary drummer, Ikuro Takahashi played in most of the important bands of the psychedelic underground Japanese scene : Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha, Seishokki, High Rise, Ché-Shizu, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Kousokuya, LSD March and Nagisa Ni Te, but also with Junzo Suzuki, Tamio Shiraishi, Akiko Hotaka and many others, making it difficult to write a comprehensive list. Ikuro does not make a distinction between the young musicians with whom he collaborates, and the big names of the underground behind whom he brings an enveloping rhythm, like the wind blowing through a bamboo forest.
A native of Hokkaï do, born in 1957, exiled in downtown Tokyo, Ikuro Takahashi lived there for a while before settling back in Sapporo with his partner, dancer Yoko Muronoi, starting the Anoyonodekigoto project together. All pieces gathered here were composed for their duo shows. Yoko Moronoi was reunited with the shadows of her ancestors in 2017, leaving Ikuro alone in the world of the living. This record appears as the last flower laid at the shrine of her dance.
This album gathers 7 tracks, most of which were built from an overlay of oscillators, music boxes and metronomes. Sometimes it recalls Takehisa Kosugi’s pieces, a common way of unfolding time and space, of making our perception float. A common saving of gesture, of concept. Ikuro Takahashi is like a weaver trapping our listening in his electric wires, dragging us in a flux of rhythmic, fluid, circular patterns.
Ikuro Takahashi is like these shamans summoning our shadows, our ghosts, to make the living core within us sing.

Dave Phillips - (2020) Post Homo Sapiens

 

Attenuation Circuit ‎– ACU 1017

Screeching, prying dark ambient assembled from ghostly hums, booming percussion, and various field recordings. It’s a testament to post homo sapiens’ power and sublime instrumentation that, even though it clocks in at over an hour in its entirety, I never fail to become completely transfixed by it, unable to look away from its first cry to its final death rattles. If I were in a score-giving mood it would probably get my highest rating. There isn’t much I feel compelled to say about it here; I think the music does the talking. As the release page says: “PLAY LOUD as one listening session.”

Listen if: you’re on an elevator, going up, somewhere: where? It doesn’t matter. On each floor, the doors open and close. No one gets on with you; nothing stirs the void beyond the doors. You don’t get off, either; you’re not sure how, but you know that you have a long way to go before you reach your destination.

Joan of Arc - Tim Melina Theo Bobby LP

 

Joyful Noise Recordings ‎– JNR353 

Tim Melina Theo Bobby, the last album by Joan of Arc, plays as if Tim Kinsella, Melina Ausikaitis, Theo Katsaounis, and Bobby Burg sat down to compile their greatest hits, remembered they aren’t the kind of band that writes hits, and decided to try out a little bit of everything. There’s an effective literalism to this approach: If you’ve ever liked a Joan of Arc song, then you’ll almost certainly like some of these. And if you didn’t, then track 1 sounds exactly like American Football—talk about an instant crowd pleaser.

This is how a lot of people first come to Joan of Arc, of course: Via the most memed house in Champaign-Urbana, tracing the ways Tim Kinsella and his younger brother Mike’s musical careers have crisscrossed since Cap’n Jazz, the inventive and influential emo band they founded as teenagers. Joan of Arc’s anxious deadpan meandering and virtuoso weirdness can be a more acquired taste, and there’s a lot to acquire—they’ve released 20-some albums in the past 20 years. No two are especially alike, except for the constant presence of Tim Kinsella and a spirit of diffident, digressive unpredictability. And now it’s over.

As an album, Tim Melina Theo Bobby is maybe even less concerned than usual with coherence, which tends to create the atmosphere of a singles collection. If there’s a unifying theme, it’s about time and boundaries, the things that separate concepts like then and now or you and me. Musically, this can sound like a walk through Joan of Arc’s tangly, overgrown garden: the sawtoothed strums of “Karma Repair Kit” (“I got a lot of good to do/To possibly come out even”), the moodier reflecting pool of “Creature and Being,” the wet-noodle synth of “Land Surveyor.” Over the motorik groove of “Cover Letter,” Kinsella reviews his résumé, How to With John Wilson-style, reflecting on the many, many other jobs he’s performed in service to music: “I prepared various coffee drinks/And I waited tables stoned…/Afternoon shift selling businessmen porn in order to keep the shelves stocked with underground and foreign art films/And I wrote songs.” The hustle sounds like a drag; the song doesn’t, which is where the pathos comes in.

But Joan of Arc have always been a band of multiple simultaneous perspectives—never more than now, when Kinsella and Ausikaitis divide lead vocal duties. As a medium for undermining literal meaning, Ausikaitis is unrivaled; her lyrics can be funny, visceral, or morbid but always mysterious and absurd. “Another role where the movie ends, nice/It’s a natural conclusion that people can buy,” she sings at the top of “Feedback 3/4” (sounds just like the name says). I picture her reading film scripts, reaching for galaxy-brained director questions like But what is ending, actually? and So if this is ending, then what is life? Her riddles make for really good songs, like standout “Something Kind,” where a creeping, knotted guitar melody escalates to a noisy window.

The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus - (2013) After The End 3xCD

 

 Infrastition ‎– End 016

A limited edition, 3-CD box set of The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus's "The Gift Of Tears" (1987, Probe Plus), "Mirror" (1990, Probe Plus), and "A Rumour Of Angels" which appears to be unique to this box set: the first cut is from a VA compilation, Jekura - Deep The Eternal Forest; 2, 3 & 4 are from the EP, La Liturgie Pour La Fin Du Temps; 5, 6 &7 are from the EP Paradis (and cuts 6 & 7 were mislabeled in production with 7 being 6 and 6 being 7; 8 & 9 are from "Beauty Will Save The World."

This is similar to the 1994 compilation on Apocalyptic Vision with the exception which had only two disks and took three songs from La Liturgie Pour La Fin Du Temps to round out the second disk.

"After The End" is a remastered compilation.

--

When The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus turned up in the late-’80s Liverpool underground with The Gift of Tears, the critical lexicon to describe their sound didn’t quite exist. European folk influences are infused by Eastern Orthodox spirituality, industrial cacophony, disco beats, post-punk angularity and jazz rhythms. A quarter century later, we know RAIJ can be at least loosely associated with the apocalyptic folk movement of acts such as Current 93, Death In June, Dead Can Dance, Caroliner and Wovenhand.

But RAIJ reside even on the perimeter of that fold, not only for the imagery they invoke, but the enigma lying at their heart: no personnel listings, limited edition releases, not exactly reams to be read about them on the web and the way their disparate sound coheres over the course of an album as an enveloping, immersive experience transporting the listener to an alternate reality, where plainsong and operatic flights of vocal fancy met tribal drums, didgeridoo and some of the harshest of synth sounds.

After The End’s three CDs collect Gift and everything else RAIJ studio recorded (including two new tracks) in packaging handsome enough to pass for a Harmonia Mundi compilation of pre-Baroque classical music. The only things that might have made this more wonderful would have been lyrics, reminiscences from the Army themselves, a longer booklet essay and a video of at least one of their rare, multimedia-abetted concerts. But any more than what’s here might dissipate the mystery that’s always been a goodly percentage of The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus raison d’être.
 

Dan Oxenberg, Bear Galvin + Friends (Pillow Mt. Conspiracy) ‎- (2019) Early Abstractions. Vol. 1 LP

 

Feeding Tube Records ‎– FTR454 

Three:four Records (Switzerland) and Feeding Tube Records (USA) are pleased to announce the release of Early Abstractions, Vol. 1 by Danny Oxenberg (Supreme Dicks), Bear Galvin, and Friends (Pillow Mt. Conspiracy). "Early Abstractions, Vol. 1" is the follow-up to their 2016 release "Late Superimpositions" (three:four records), and contains recordings made in New York, Western Massachusetts, and Los Angeles…some old, some older, some relatively new, some borrowed, some blue. The album was produced by Maxime Guitton, with original art by Hippolyte Hentgen and design/layout by Darryl Norsen.

Of their previous release "Late Superimpositions", Sing Sing wrote: “Ce que ce duo flou ramène de telles pérégrinations est comme la carte brûlée d'un territoire authentiquement sauvage où mélodies radieuses et dissonances plus ou moins consenties, bruit lymphatique et lyrisme enroué, mélancolie indélébile et profusion d’épiphanies s'entrecroisent, s'échangent et se relancent pour mettre en branle quelque chose comme de la grâce…une raison supplémentaire de croire que les fantômes sont parmi nous et qu'ils n'en finissent plus de mourir d'amour.” (Translation: This hazy duet brings back from such peregrinations what sounds like the burnt map of an authentically savage territory, where radiant melodies and more or less agreed upon dissonances, lymphatic noise and hoarse lyricism, indelible melancholy and profuse epiphanies cross, substitute and rekindle each other, setting in motion something that could be grace…one more reason to believe that ghosts are among us and that they can’t stop dying of love.). Marc Masters (The Out Door: 200 words) wrote: “Subdued and patient, these simple, guitar-weaved tunes keep tilting to the side, wobbling away from the straight path into the weeds of something more interesting. They’re also just plain gorgeous…”  

CVN - (2019) I​.​C. LP

 

Orange Milk Records ‎– none

Japan’s Nobuyuki Sakuma is a prolific artist; formerly of the Jesse Ruins duo on the Captured Tracks label, he now shifts time between his electronic music project CVN, curating the mix series Grey Matter Archives, and chief editor duties at Avyss Magazine. “I.C.” will be his second album for Orange Milk as CVN, and it is an eclectic hybrid of beat music and abstract electronics. There is a searching quality in his music, with leaps in variation from track to track that are meant to elicit the mutating feelings of walking through Tokyo.

The first track 成分 Seibun is a calm pop song featuring Japanese vocalist NTsKi, and feels like an initial encounter with nocturnal cityscapes. As the album progresses a stranger Japanese electronic music culture begins to emerge, referencing artists like good friend Foodman and label partner Koeosaeme with irreverent assertions of anti-genre music making. Tracks like “Snippets of Heaven” are reminiscent of music on the labels PAN or Halcyon Veil, cryptic and sparse with random industrial beats and scraping metal. “舌下 (Karaoke)” is a more forlorn piece with straightforward rhythm and deeply effecting use of repetition. Sakuma states that he lets mood dominate his track making and does not care if this transitioning emotion fits into a cohesive style. The skill of harnessing the random nature of each tracks aesthetic is impressive, resulting in an exciting record that faithfully documents its creators place and time.

Félicia Atkinson - (2018) Coyotes

 

Geographic North ‎– GN49

Félicia Atkinson is a composer, sculptor, painter, poet, and publisher from Rennes, France. Atkinson has led a fruitfully fantastic run of eerily blissful, serenely euphoric sounds. Whether under her own name or via her defunct recording pseudonym Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, Atkinson has released work on Umor Rex, Digitalis Limited, Aguirre, and Shelter Press, an imprint co-run with Bartolomé Sanson.

‘Coyotes’ is an EP inspired by Atkinson’s last voyage to New Mexico in February 2017, when she visited and took in the geographic landscapes from Taos to Ghost Ranch. The same vistas also inspired much of Agnes Martin’s and Georgia O’Keefe’s painting, as well as Jerome Rothenberg’s poetry and translation’s works.

Atkinson describes a ‘Coyotes’ as a “Carnet de Voyage,” a tape you could directly play in your car while traveling somewhere, a kind of imaginary map to a sentimental journey. A spontaneous gesture, close to the notion of gift or offering. Or, simply, a postcard to a friend.” But it’s also a praise to the conservation of national and state parks and its human and non-human souls, menaced as we know now by drilling and violent economic speculations.

Here, coyotes act as a kind of metaphor of ambiguity and doubt, a state of mind that Atkinson find interesting to transcribe musically; the ambiguity furthered by Atkinson as a literal “foreigner” in New Mexico. She conveys a sense of visiting these native sacred lands and wondering what you are doing there.

Musically, ‘Coyotes’ is composed of two long tracks, “Abiqiu” and “Lighter Than Aluminium.” Each track features an effervescent froth of piano, midi sounds evokes marimbas, Fender Rhodes, bells, sub-basses, and spoken word poetry written by the musician to display a melancholic landscape made of transparent but deep layers of pale colors and blurry lines.

Liz Durette - (2020) Delight LP

 

 Feeding Tube Records ‎– FTR504 

"A very whacked new outing from Baltimore keyboard genius Liz Durette. Her earlier albums had a certain avant jazz approach, tempered perhaps by certain new music proclivities. And while I do not doubt she still has the chops for such things, Delight is a horse of an entirely different color. What's here was all done on keyboards, but at times it sounds like insane calliope music for wicked children with a taste for that old waltz beat. The whole first side could be the soundtrack for a surreal film about dead Viennese courtiers high-stepping their way around the Bardo as though it were a hedge maze. The more I listen to the record, the more circular its matrix appears, and the less certain I am of the direction in which gravity is pulling me. No surprise then, to learn that part of Delight's inspiration was drawn from A Genuine Tong Funeral, Gary Burton's amazing '68 LP, comprised of a full set of Carla Bley's wildest early compositions. On the flip, Durette is in a similar fettle, but seems keener on exploring the faux percussive aspects of her 'axe.' This involves the simulation of little people tap dancing on a xylophone, as well as very many other transgressive-if-meditative sonic activities. And they are all done with such flair and attention to detail you really have to wonder what sort of visions Liz has accessed. They seem to exist somewhere between romance and math. The universe of sounds she creates on Delight is wildly complex, but also it appears to operate by a set of congruous rules throughout. Like I said earlier, GENIUS!"

Dan Melchior & Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson - (2019) Cod War Kids CD

 

Some – none 

 A deep and delicate dive into the psyche of an unusual duo, British-born ex-pat North Carolinian guitarist Dan Melchior & Icelandic-born Hanover-based experimentalist Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson. Each quite unique on their own accord, but in combination bring a sound reminiscent of some odd combination of church music, the Deep South, some kind of swampy bluegrass, the Phantom of the Opera — really it’s hard to pinpoint where they might go. But through the whispering murmurs, the twang and fleeting harmonica is a true exploration of darkened corners. It’s as if they’ve awoken the ghosts of the old Gentry, and put them on someone’s front stoop to haunt the neighborhood.

Titles such as Blind Curtains & Curious Eyes and More Exclusive Dramatic Moments show a completely wry side to a sound that meanders in the furthermost corners. On the first of these the duo sets off an alarm of sorts that blisters through a somewhat unsettled, dusty setting. The unfixed feel of ‘anything could happen’ breeds excitement. Between whispers in retreat and an inebriated drone lies open space and tormented quietude. The moodiness shifts from the hushed hallows to mock-rock with scintillating guitar fuzz spilled all over Wino Ryder Forever. Those apey voices amid the taunting funky bottom end are, well, everything. This one is spooked.

If you crossed The Residents with a lil’ Earl Scruggs and maybe just a pinch of Sunn O))) you might be in the next field over if you reversed it and played it back. Cod War Kids is mesmerizing, each and every moment, and More Exclusive Dramatic Moments is the record’s most elusive, in that it sounds more like its eavesdropping than trying to entertain. It’s ambient, it’s ominous, and so half-mast sleepy. Sooner Will Be Coming Soon (I Have Never Been Calm Or Misunderstood) only hints gently at a Phillip Glass soundtrack passage, it must be those burrowing horns. There’s this dreamlike sense of post-war, a lingering sense of dread fading.

As we are up to the finale, This Is The Scene Where Siggy And Dan Receive Their Prophecies From The Witches, the listener may lean to imagine how this tale ends. Barely audible walkie-talkie like transmissions, crickets and a wavering drone make for a pitched chamber misplaced in the woods. The atmosphere writhes in near silence for a while, and fades into the end. This record will create a flustered sense of wonder for those who dare. And, my dears, this will certainly end up on the top of my heap for 2019.

Dan Deacon - (2003) Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat CDr

 

Standard Oil Records ‎– SOR-04003 

The music contained on these albums I wrote while in college (and a few while in high school) when I was just discovering computer music. I wrote them for fun, never planning on doing anything with them at that the time or expecting them to be heard outside of my circle of friends. When I was asked to play a show on campus I thought it might be a good idea to burn some CD-Rs and try to sell them at the show.

Going through my files, I found the pieces that I liked the most, grouped them into two different collections and gave them the most appropriate/absurd titles I could think of. The organization of the songs was somewhat thoughtout but mostly chaotic: make sure the granular synth pieces are far from each other; keep the songs with beats spread out; sound collages placed amongst sine wave drone pieces. They were more like compilations of my experiments than albums of compositions.

I made only 8 CD-R copies of each in photocopied sleeves with contact paper on the discs. I sold all but 1 of each for $7 or two for $10. Explosions were going off in my head, dollar signs appearing in my eyes. Making $70 from selling CD-Rs was blowing my mind. I started selling them at every show, even though the music contained on them didn’t represent what I ever performed live, since the music on Meetle Mice and Silly Hat was never meant to be performed live (except for the acoustic ensemble pieces).

The CD-Rs and artwork are riddled with mistakes. There’s digital clipping on many of the tracks; ‘Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat’ was meant to be ‘Silly Hat vs. Eagle Hat’; “copy write” should have been ‘copyright’, etc., but I thought the typos were funny and kept it with each batch of the CD-Rs. Since I was only selling them on campus or a few shows in NYC it didn’t really matter. I hated stuff that took itself too seriously so keeping my spelling mistakes glaring was important to me. And considering the music was made in a vacuum with no intention of it ever seeing the light of day, it made sense to keep all the errors in their original state (true of this reissue as well the artwork for this reissue was scanned from the original run of 8.)

I was a very different musician back then trying to figure out how to interact with sound, what could be done with it, where it could go, learning music software for the first time. Since then my aesthetic has shifted, my absurdist mindset subdued. At times I feel like these albums are skeletons in my musical closet. Many of the song titles are absurd or toy with the idea of what is offensive and what is not, many of them created as a commentary on the super politically correct atmosphere that was Purchase College in the early 2000s.

These albums are like seeds. They sound, look and feel very different from the fruit that they’ve grown but they are still of the same tree.

–Dan Deacon

 

Dan Deacon - (2004) Meetle Mice CDr

 

Standard Oil Records ‎– none 

The music contained on these albums I wrote while in college (and a few while in high school) when I was just discovering computer music. I wrote them for fun, never planning on doing anything with them at that the time or expecting them to be heard outside of my circle of friends. When I was asked to play a show on campus I thought it might be a good idea to burn some CD-Rs and try to sell them at the show.

Going through my files, I found the pieces that I liked the most, grouped them into two different collections and gave them the most appropriate/absurd titles I could think of. The organization of the songs was somewhat thoughtout but mostly chaotic: make sure the granular synth pieces are far from each other; keep the songs with beats spread out; sound collages placed amongst sine wave drone pieces. They were more like compilations of my experiments than albums of compositions.

I made only 8 CD-R copies of each in photocopied sleeves with contact paper on the discs. I sold all but 1 of each for $7 or two for $10. Explosions were going off in my head, dollar signs appearing in my eyes. Making $70 from selling CD-Rs was blowing my mind. I started selling them at every show, even though the music contained on them didn’t represent what I ever performed live, since the music on Meetle Mice and Silly Hat was never meant to be performed live (except for the acoustic ensemble pieces).

The CD-Rs and artwork are riddled with mistakes. There’s digital clipping on many of the tracks; ‘Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat’ was meant to be ‘Silly Hat vs. Eagle Hat’; “copy write” should have been ‘copyright’, etc., but I thought the typos were funny and kept it with each batch of the CD-Rs. Since I was only selling them on campus or a few shows in NYC it didn’t really matter. I hated stuff that took itself too seriously so keeping my spelling mistakes glaring was important to me. And considering the music was made in a vacuum with no intention of it ever seeing the light of day, it made sense to keep all the errors in their original state (true of this reissue as well the artwork for this reissue was scanned from the original run of 8.)

I was a very different musician back then trying to figure out how to interact with sound, what could be done with it, where it could go, learning music software for the first time. Since then my aesthetic has shifted, my absurdist mindset subdued. At times I feel like these albums are skeletons in my musical closet. Many of the song titles are absurd or toy with the idea of what is offensive and what is not, many of them created as a commentary on the super politically correct atmosphere that was Purchase College in the early 2000s.

These albums are like seeds. They sound, look and feel very different from the fruit that they’ve grown but they are still of the same tree. 

ﺍﺗﻤﻨﻰ ﻟﻮ ﺍﻥ ﺍﻟﺮﻳﺎﺡ ﺗﺠﻠﻲ ﺍﻟﺮﻣﺎﺩ Couronne De Merde - (2020)

 

 Broken Britain Cassettes ‎– BBC.WS2

BEIRUT, Lebanon — a haunted city. The dead look out from the bullet holes which scar the public squares and back streets, presided over by the monumental ruin of the Holiday Inn, overlooking the city from its seafront cathedral.

Broken Britain Cassettes advances its World Service campaign eastward with an anatopic release from Frenchman Couronne de Merde, who became preoccupied by the Lebanese Civil War after repeated visits to Beirut. Recorded over a week in Paris, these tracks are an exorcism of the ghosts who followed him back.

Spectral voices lurk behind the shell-shocked synths and an urgent battery of percussion. Proceedings move forward and backwards in time - at once observing the event and recalling it afterward. Disparate scenes and incidents are conflated in a trans-historical bloodbath, underscored by a sorrowful ambience which longs for meaning in Sacrifice.

Couronne de Merde casts an unflinching gaze at theocratic and political contradictions. ﺍﺗﻤﻨﻰ ﻟﻮ ﺍﻥ ﺍﻟﺮﻳﺎﺡ ﺗﺠﻠﻲ ﺍﻟﺮﻣﺎﺩ is a poetic documentation and dramatisation of a modern conflict, this late iteration of ancient struggles between Religion and Secularity, Christianity and Islam, Dominance and Freedom.

Fire-Toolz - (2020) Rainbow Bridge

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO99  

On her third LP for Hausu Mountain, the Chicago experimental musician amps up the extremes of her work: It’s more crushing than ever, yet it features moments as tranquil as anything in her catalog.

The music that the Chicago experimenter Angel Marcloid makes as Fire-Toolz exists somewhere at the fuzzy border between peace and pandemonium. Across the handful of albums she’s released under that name over the last half-decade, she’s made room for moments of blissed-out digital ambience, technical death-metal fantasias, glitch-scoured noise, and glossy AM radio jazz—often all slammed together within a few bars. It can feel like mayhem, but Marcloid insists her songwriting has never been self-consciously designed that way. She told AllMusic that over the last few years, her music has emerged from “a much more peaceful place,” even if it comes out gnarled and complex. “I might be making something about a serene meadow, but […] to someone who just listens to it, it might shatter their world temporarily,” she says. “That’s just how it’s going to have to be.”

On Rainbow Bridge, her third Fire-Toolz album for Chicago’s Hausu Mountain, she maintains this head-spinning approach, doubling down on the extremes of her music. It’s somehow more crushing and complex than anything she’s done as under the moniker, but it’s also full of moments as tranquil and bright as anything she’s offered in her catalog. It’s a strange balance, but it’s true to the spirit of the Fire-Toolz project as a whole, which is full of pieces that feel like they’re being torn apart as Marcloid’s impulses go galloping off in different directions.

The record begins in tumult with the double-kick battery of the concussive, minute-long “Gnosis .•o°Ozing.” It is bleak, bruising, and brief, but it also contains a few glimmers of an ascendant synth lead, which lends even this short, violent intro a surprising emotional complexity; there’s a sort of hopefulness embedded in its punishment. On “(((Ever-Widening Rings)))” she unleashes a series of terrifying screams over a shuffling synth piece that sounds not entirely unlike a Peter Gabriel instrumental. Marcloid has said that her fascination with metal began with proggy groups like Dream Theater and Fates Warning, bands that were more about world-building than brutality. The heavier moments on Rainbow Bridge seem designed with the same purpose in mind. They may be more transparently metal than anything Marcloid has done to date, but she’s not just trying to pummel you, she’s presenting complicated emotions for a complicated world. It’s a careful, considered exploration of a vein that’s run through her music from the very beginning.

The slower moments of Rainbow Bridge are no less engaging. Tracks like “Dreamy #ex Code” evoke both the dizzy mysticism of new-age music and the burpy psychedelia of Animal Collective’s early collage experiments, while others draw on the humid jazz riffing that informed Marcloid’s record as Nonlocal Forecast. Even if any given moment is crammed with sounds, the record gives a lot of space to the serenity that she says informs her work. The record’s closer, “{Screamographic Memory}” is perhaps the most purely placid thing in her catalog: a collection of bell-like synth tones stretching and seeping into one another. It’s sweet and sunny, about as far from the thunderous terror that opens the record as you could imagine getting.

Rainbow Bridge was made in part as a reflection on the death of Marcloid’s cat Breakfast, which explains in part the way the record swings back and forth between beauty and cacophony. Marcloid’s work as Fire-Toolz has always been about the way that these two emotional poles can coexist, but the way we deal with death is especially complicated. Even the most intense grief is braided with moments of peace and clarity, the beautiful memories of a life well-lived. Rainbow Bridge mirrors the intensity and the confusion of these experiences and shows that even in the direst times, it’s possible to find comfort.

Manuel Mota, Marcia Bassett & Margarida Garcia - (2019) Here They Rest Immobile LP

 

 Yew ‎– YEW-009

November 2017 found Marcia Bassett, Margarida Garcia and Manuel Mota converging in Antwerp. This LP is the premiere recording of the trio configuration. Extraordinary passages of immersive improvisation interactions combine abstract transcendental chemistry that soars through dark hallucinatory passageways. If fragmentary thought is recurrent it converges here in mutual inspiration. Here They Rest Immobile refers to the ghost of place, the shadows that slowly shift with the light, the skeletal frame work of half built /partially torn down structures and the resonating hum of the activity that once defined Diamantkwartier. The trio recorded the three new improvisational suites found on this record at Sound in Motion Studio, Antwerp. Identifying streaks from each of the players, all respectively known for their own solo explorations and improvisational techniques, interweave and take flight into otherworldly soundscapes.

ENA - (2019) Baroque 12''

 

 Different Circles ‎– DIFF009

 Two years in the making, Different Circles is very proud to present Baroque, six unorthodox excursions into chaotic upper-atmosphere dynamics from Japanese artist Ena.

Variously recalling coded AI shortwave transmissions and blasted high arctic landscapes through the filter of the most abtruse Chain Reaction-adjacent sound design, it is a pleasure to welcome Ena to the DC fold.

Vinyl avaiable now. Download released 31 October 2019.

This release features specially designed cover art by Raime.

Euglossine - (2019) Coriolis CS

 

 Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 83 

Tristan Whitehill is a Gainesville, Florida-based musician and visual artist who runs the adventurous, playful netlabel Squiggle Dot and has released over a dozen albums and EPs as Euglossine. Having refined his sound from his crunchier, more lo-fi early work, Euglossine's first Hausu Mountain release is a peaceful, trippy mélange of fusion jazz and smooth funk, as well as the knotty intricacies of IDM and prog rock. Trained in jazz and classical music, Whitehill's virtuosity is obvious, and his compositions are richly detailed, yet they're so fluid that it can be easy to overlook their complexity. With prior releases on labels like Beer on the Rug and Orange Milk, Euglossine has fallen into the orbit of the vaporwave scene, but the project's work seems far more sincere than most of the bedroom-dwelling laptop postmodernists slowing down samples of Weather Channel smooth jazz and hiding behind memes. The drum machines are a bit plastic-sounding, but the synth textures and especially the guitars are much warmer and more vivid, and tracks like "Eternal Mouse" have pleasing melodies reminiscent of Mike Paradinas at his prime. "Cloud Bop" is a feathery shot of future-shocked electro, and the peppy "Zig Zag" injects some skronky sax, like John Zorn trapped in an elevator. Both relaxing and stimulating, Coriolis is Euglossine's smoothest ride yet.

Exportion + Meoss - (2010) Drawing For Recognition

 

Section 27 ‎– [S27-038] 

 

Eartheater - (2015) RIP Chrysalis CD

 

 Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 38

"As droplets of data rain from the Cloud, Alex Drewchin embeds another digital seed into the soil and watches the vines unfold according to their own feral algorithms. RIP Chrysalis is her second full-length album under the Eartheater moniker released on Hausu Mountain in the year 2015, which she will remind you is the Year of the Goat. The files ripped from her devices duplicate through electronic pollination and drift from ear bud to ear bud. The moments we spend listening fall back to earth as plucked petals. RIP Chrysalis spreads on a lateral trajectory from the same rhizome that bore her debut full-length Metalepsis. The two albums stand together as sibling entities, bearing similar faces and distinct personalities. With her experiments as a founding member of the avant-psych duo Guardian Alien illuminating a parallel path through deep inner space, we witness Drewchin transmute her concrete experiences into another harvest that expands in all directions at once. Her intricate ballad arrangements rise from standing pools of hi-fidelity synthesis. Her dynamic vocal performances span an untold number of tactics and tonalities, flitting between sing-song cadences, otherworldly coos, and flights of operatic grandeur. Her dense song structures find room for multiple staggered climaxes, tangents of sampled found sound, and expanses of drone meditation. Drewchin builds layered electronic productions possessed of enough detail to constitute stand-alone worlds, each weighted thick with text and texture.

RIP Chrysalis finds Eartheater stretching her omnivorous compositions into longer frameworks, allowing each atmosphere to thicken to its saturation point with stacked tiers of choral voice and interwoven synth lines. The sudden onsets of spoken word interludes, bursts of corrupted glitch, and hip hop 808 kick patterns maintain Drewchin's role as the unpredictable curator of her own sonic universe - and yet these missives feel more essential than ever, juxtaposed against legible passages of guitar and vocal performance that bend conventions of pop and rock like elastic playthings. As her productions diversify into new realms of fine-grain electronic experimentation, Drewchin simultaneously steps closer to some semblance of humanity. Her lyrics wind their way into your psyche from multiple entry points. Abstract metaphysical incantations lean on frank colloquialisms. Multi-syllabic rhyme schemes churn through surreal images in double time. Some turns of phrase astound on the spot, and others sneak past your defenses, only to manifest as obvious revelations many listens down the line. Drewchin's guitar chimes through arpeggios that glue her compositions together at the seams, while flashes of acoustic texture provided by lush string arrangements elevate her crescendos to new heights of emotional catharsis. At any given moment, an Eartheater composition reads somewhere between a folk song, a musique concrète collage, and a filmic suite fit to soundtrack a multiversal montage that only Drewchin can imagine in full detail. Her music grants us an opportunity to observe a process of internal negotiation: the deprogramming of false fundamentals; the fulfillment achieved by creating from within a system sinking deeper into bureaucratic regulation and surveillance; the ongoing construction of an avatar as a necessary foil to a breathing human."

Beatrice Dillon - (2020) Workaround

 

 Pan ‎– PAN106 

 ‘Workaround’ is the lucidly playful and ambitious solo debut album by rhythm-obsessive musician and DJ, Beatrice Dillon for PAN. It combines her love of UK club music’s syncopated suss and Afro-Caribbean influences with a gamely experimental approach to modern composition and stylistic fusion, using inventive sampling and luminous mixing techniques adapted from modern pop to express fresh ideas about groove-driven music and perpetuate its form with timeless, future-proofed clarity.

Recorded over 2017-19 between studios in London, Berlin and New York, ‘Workaround’ renders a hypnotic series of polymetric permutations at a fixed 150bpm tempo. Mixing meticulous FM synthesis and harmonics with crisply edited acoustic samples from a wide range of guests including UK Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra (tabla); Pharoah Sanders Band’s Jonny Lam (pedal steel guitar); techno innovators Laurel Halo (synth/vocal) and Batu (samples); Senegalese Griot Kadialy Kouyaté (Kora), Hemlock’s Untold and new music specialist Lucy Railton (cello); amongst others, Dillon deftly absorbs their distinct instrumental colours and melody into 14
bright and spacious computerised frameworks that suggest immersive, nuanced options for dancers, DJs and domestic play.

‘Workaround’ evolves Dillon’s notions in a coolly unfolding manner that speaks directly to the album’s literary and visual inspirations, ranging from James P. Carse’s book ‘Finite And Infinite Games’ to the abstract drawings of Tomma Abts or Jorinde Voigt as well as painter Bridget Riley’s essays on grids and colour. Operating inside this rooted but mutable theoretical wireframe, Dillon’s ideas come to life as interrelated, efficient patterns in a self-sufficient system.

With a naturally fractal-not-fractional logic, Dillon’s rhythms unfold between unresolved 5/4 tresillo patterns, complex tabla strokes and spark-jumping tics in a fluid, tactile dance of dynamic contrasts between strong/light, sudden/restrained, and bound/free made in reference to the notational instructions of choreographer Rudolf Laban. Working in and around the beat and philosophy, the album’s freehand physics contract and expand between the lissom rolls of Bhamra’s tabla in the first, to a harmonious balance of hard drum angles and swooping FM synth cadence featuring additional synth and vocal from Laurel Halo in ‘Workaround Two’, while the extruded strings of Lucy Railton create a sublime tension at the album’s palatecleansing denouement, triggering a scintillating run of technoid pieces that riff on the kind of swung physics found in Artwork’s seminal ‘Basic G’, or Rian Treanor’s disruptive flux with a singularly tight yet loose motion and infectious joy.

Crucially, the album sees Dillon focus on dub music’s pliable emptiness, rather than the moody dematerialisation of reverb and echo. The substance of her music is rematerialised in supple, concise emotional curves and soberly freed to enact its ideas in balletic plies, rugged parries and sweeping, capoeira-like floor action. Applying deeply canny insight drawn from her years of practice as sound designer, musician and hugely knowledgable/intuitive DJ, ‘Workaround’ can be heard as Dillon’s ingenious solution or key to unlocking to perceptions of stiffness, darkness or grid-locked rigidity in electronic music. And as such it speaks to an ideal of rhythm-based and experimental music ranging from the hypnotic senegalese mbalax of Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, through SND and, more currently, the hard drum torque of DJ Plead; to adroitly exert the sensation of weightlessness and freedom in the dance and personal headspace.

Atonet Moonilena - (2019) Boiling Sea CS

 

 Moloton ‎– MOLOTON011 

 Atonet and Moonilena, also co-runners of the label, have collected a series of tracks on a cassette split, ‘Boiling Sea’.

The Atonet side of the split presents a series of monochromatic ambient and generative works, made with tape loops and various synthesis techniques. Moonilena’s side contains a piece that she presented for the 100-year anniversary of late text-sound composer, artist and fighter pilot turned antimilitarist Åke Hodell. In it, she explores an imagined narrative in which a since long discarded signal intelligence system forgets its initial mission and starts producing underwater poetry, scrambled with random coordinate readings.

Ashtray Navigations & Anla Courtis - (2019) Protozoic Rock Express CD

 

Public Eyesore ‎– PE144 

 The pressure is heavy on Protozoic Rock Express. A sonic current steadily pushing through the subsurface, and within the intensity, clarity and detail escape like air breathing from volcanic vents. A dark droning composition filled experienced aural stitching. Life pulled from the darkness then placed like breadcrumbs along the path. Two artists across an ocean, their patience and care over multiple years produces a heavyweight masterpiece.

Three tracks on Protozoic Rock Express divided into forty five minutes. Phil Todd is the force behind Ashtray Navigations, playing acoustic guitar, oscillators, moog sampled harmonium & casio sampler. Anla Courtis plays electric guitar, organ, hawk-bells e-bow & found metals. Together these duo creates a fantastic sonic landscape. The severity of these sounds in perfect balance with the aural facets lifting above the depths. The beauty of Protozoic Rock Express is it's ability to provide contemplative meditation, but never sinking so deep as to drown thoughts with the music itself.  

 

Arek Gulbenkoglu - (2017) Three Days Afterwards

 

Penultimate Press ‎– pp29 

 Three Days Afterwards is the fourth solo release from Arek Gulbenkoglu. Within manifests a disorientating assignment of tones, textures, and voice. Hovering around the key words below there is an unsettling psychedelic music – ripe for this foreboding age.

Klara Lewis - (2020) Ingrid LP

 

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 270

Klara Lewis comes into her own with the furling melancholic loops and raging despair of ‘Ingrid’, recalling Steve Reich’s phasing inventions worn out by Basinski, or the way her stark native landscape manifests in black metal.

“Following 2018's acclaimed collaboration with Simon Fisher Turner, "Care", Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis returns with "Ingrid", her third solo release for Editions Mego. "Ingrid" is a departure from Lewis's previous solo outings, drifting from the eerie rhythmic variations of "Too" and "Ett" and moving assuredly into long-form experimentation. The piece retains those records' pulsing core and builds on a single cello loop that is steadily enveloped by a surge of distortion. It's almost like a voice or chant, shifting pointedly from a whisper into a scream before singing peacefully into the light.

At times, "Ingrid" reminds of William Basinski's looping melancholy or Steve Reich's controlled and innovative phase experiments, while at others, it recalls the chaotic Scandinavian physicality of black metal. Yet the entire composition is anchored in Klara Lewis's distinct emotional world. By dissolving familiar and beautiful strings in baths of noise, Lewis allows something violent but tender to grow in its place. In a society struck through by cynicism, "Ingrid" is a cathartic listening experience and a beacon of hope.”

Ka Baird - (2019) Respires

 

RVNG Intl. ‎– RVNGNL61 

 Respires, the second solo album by Ka Baird, blurs the line between word and action, definition and possibility. Spirited yet restrained, bearing its wildly thrummed heart strings and inner calm alike, Respires ventures toward the unknown, charting the shifting ground of experimental music and the rewards born of risk.

Tapping the ecstatic energy and cathartic experience of Baird’s live sets, pushing the extremes of psychological and physical release, Respires represents an unquestionable leap for an artist already out on a limb. Largely written and recorded across the length of 2018, the eight pieces align as a series of visceral actions, captured, culled, and intricately shaped by Baird, then expanded with contributions from Zach Rowden (bass), Max Eilbacher and Andrew Fitzpatrick (synths), and Greg Fox (drums).

Respires was born from the intertwined etymologies of spirit and breath, the results of Baird’s singular approach to extended vocal technique and radical notions of “body music” which push her performances to uncompromising extremes. Channeling a raw energy from an internal depth, the genetics of Respires construct new bridges of communication, reaching across the perceptual boundaries of spiritual and physical.

KTL - (2020) VII

 

Editions Mego ‎– eMEGO 287  

 A new timley studio album from the duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Recorded and mixed during an unexpected extended stay in Berlin when the borders of the world suddenly closed. The claustrophobic urgency of this scenario is seared into the colossal vibrations set into this vinyl release.
Unlike many of their releases this is a studio record made unto itself as opposed to the many soundtracks they have made for theatre works and the like. It also stands as one of their most fully realised releases to date.

Proceedings are launched with The Director. Sitting somewhere between contemporary classical and doom this is a sliding and menacing mass of sound, more Masque of the Red Death than The Decameron. Silver lining is an alarming swooping buzzing track, looming and lowering only to rise and descend again. A delicate play with the Shepard-Risset glissando manifesting a delirious swarm of sound. Lee’s garlic orbits into a short fragmented zone with bursts of harsh feedback and crashing fx, all manner of audio enters and is discarded with an underlying sense of despair and frustration. Proceedings continue on Side B with Tea With Kali where a calmer plateau is embedded with oscillating guitar and fluttering electronics. Beating sine waves envelop the listener in a meditative thought piece of sound. Frostless concludes this epic dispatch as a subtle and gentle foray into twitching electronics as a light buzzsaw drone swirls as around your mind.

The interplay of sources (guitar, electronic equipment (hardware, software, speakers) is so entwined it’s often difficult to discern who is doing what amongst the broad sound field. KTL VII is instrumental music as visual narrative resulting in an exquisitely crafted release full of sophisticated and sublime illusory effects.

L.S.Y. - (2019) Midheaven CS

 

Jungle Gym Records ‎– JGT37

 JUNGLE GYM RECORDS presents "Midheaven", official debut of Los Angeles' L.S.Y. A collaborative effort from Dravier and Samira Winter, JGT39 scours the the dampest corners of LA for aquatic ritual and subterranean trapdoors. A bold introduction to the L.S.Y. universe, "Midheaven" is exotica for storm-drain portal... exclusively from JUNGLE GYM.