Here's a somewhat recent discovery for me, though it's been love at first sight. Florian Hecker and Russell Haswell collaborating using the UPIC system developed by Iannis Xenakis. Haswell has been a bit iffy for me solo, haven't found my way in yet. But he always seems to do great with collabs, and here he totally goes with Hecker's operating procedure of pure computer noise. It's very appropriate that he did something so directly linked to the Xenakis lineage. I don't want to say that it avoids any link to music made not on computers, because there are these repetitions and phrases that pop up sometimes, but so much of the grammar of the sounds and the way timbres develop and all the super long glissando bits and completely artificial stereo image with different things in left and right channels at times, the core of the music here is all driven by what is made available with digital tech. I am a huge fan of Florian Hecker, but the increasingly extreme synth timbres he's been working with can make the albums feel a bit daunting and so it's more difficult to find those times where my body is ready. But with this album, it gets extreme, sure, but never quite crossing that threshold that Hecker goes over on other albums. And so I am really valuing it highly, it's some easy to reach brainfloss for me. I'm still not sure how to really articulate much about the compositional stuff that makes it distinct, but I definitely feel like something's there. Maybe on a future listen.
I'm landing somewhere with this, I think I do prefer R Plus Seven. I feel like the interludes in the beginning mess things up. Like not to a point where this album isn't in my top 10, but enough to keep it out of top 5. I don't know, the way it's paced leading into the super odd Mutant Standard, it kinda throws me. After that it really solidifies for me though. And Mutant Standard is one that I've been clicking with, the drums are weird in that because they start off pounding away but in the middle it's more like you get just the texture of it with some pitch shifts giving a rhythm but the percussive element is coming from the ravey melody, I don't know, that one I'm still figuring out. But yeah, not the strongest work from OPN, but I still think it's really great and also the move into more direct stuff and percussion seems exciting and I think he can take it further, and that'll really be something.
So further exploring Joshua Abrams' back catalog overlaps with people I already know as well, here's a sorta post rock band he had back in 1998 with Ben Vida and some other folks. Anyone familiar with Ben Vida's current synthesis heavy stuff, this is way different, he's just on guitar and trumpet here. And then there's also lots of bowed strings, some harmonium, and some occasional textural bits. I think a lot of you guys would enjoy this. A lot of the stuff you get a sort of guitar pattern that goes and then the bass and strings build up around it and it's all quite pretty. It's raining and grey out so this sort of patient, serene music is really working for me right now. I don't know if I can really get too into the nuance of it, I guess there's a sort of minimal movement to the notes, like you're sort of being held in a specific tonal space that gets established and then gradually expands. Which I guess is what I mean by patient. The way the second track slowly bleeds out into the layers of bowed strings and the way the last track starts slow in the first few minutes but solidifies with Abrams bass coming in were highlights. The last track is really something, 20+ minutes, plenty of time to really stretch out. Excellent stuff, I'll have to look into the other stuff put out by this band.
Oh and while I was adding that I noticed that I had actually already added Explorers_We to the DB last year, I must have been going just off of faulty memory at that time. I bumped it up because I was underrating it.
Went with some roomies to a grand opening of some brewery/pub that opened up nearby, had some good times. I'm back now and I had this song stuck in my head, or rather the second part of it starting around 3:04.
They're like a South African psych rock band from the late 60s/early 70s, fun stuff. I dunno if it's revelatory but the build always gets me.
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20. Haku - Na Mele A Ka Haku
First Listen
So here's something Satie mentioned being reissued, and just a heads up for everyone, you all have my very explicit attention to tell me whenever a relatively early weird electronic thing is being reissued right here in this thread. Do not allow me to miss you telling me. I want to know. Especially since right now, KFW is moving to Australia so Mimaroglu Music isn't active rn, and that's normally where I find out about these sorts of reissues. This is quite excellent, sort of classical sounding melodies with a bit of stuff that's a bit more traditional Hawaiian sounding, played on Moog with accompanying vocals that range in presentation from relatively straightforward to rather twisted. I'm really bad at classical terminology like I want to say baroque but I wouldn't know any other term to call it, which means I'd call everything that, which means my approach could literally be described as "if it's not baroque, don't fix it" and that's so dumb I just can't do that. One weird spot is a bit with spoken word in English but with a really stereotypical Japanese accent and I don't really understand what's going on because I wasn't following the content of the language but it seemed kinda fucked up? I don't know, but it's pretty contained to that one track and there's a lot going on in other spots. I don't know if it's exactly a vocoder or what on Eia Wau, Haleakala, but it worked so well. I feel like I need to understand what's going on with the one racist sounding track to chart it tho, but still on a historical document level this is crucial to hear and there's a lot of good stuff so I am very glad this was brought to my attention. But man that one track, that really threw me.
I dig this album. Got a good vibe, some smart construction and some really catchy bits. But it is very sugary, and combined with the duration it does sorta drag for me a bit in the end (tho there's some good stuff in that section too). But man, that stretch in the middle from The Glitzy Hive to Slumlord's Re-Lease, that's just some firing on all cylinders densely layered production with all sorts of details coming and going and the particulars of their sound all seeming to have had a fair amount of consideration put into it, hell yes.
So this isn't really a first listen cause I heard the early stream that was put up on a russian social media site in lower quality a couple months back. This feels like a pretty fresh listen tho with the additional relative clarity. Relative because there's still this sort of prosumer lofi thing going on. I don't have the most deep connection to Ferraro's work. I remember people were all about The Skaters and I didn't really get it, and then he had the solo thing but there was so much content. But then the immediacy of Far Side Virtual/Condo Pets made those stick with me right quick, and Bebetunes and Bodyguard and Sushi were cool but I was sorta gradually losing connection as we went along. And then the most recent two he was getting into stuff with vocals and it just wasn't clicking with me at all. Which brings us to this album, where he further pursues the vocal stuff and I think he's really nailed it this time. I don't really have handle on the conceptual packaging for this album just yet, so I don't have like a fully formed opinion on this thing. But it seems like he's made the vocals less clear than usual, and maybe he's just gotten better at it, but I don't know it just seems like it sits in the mix a lot better now and is just better at delivering musical content. The title track and Pollution stood out to me in particular. I'm digging the album, it makes me want to go back and reconsider some of the albums I sorta tuned out on. But some of the conceptual packaging stuff, like the track 1992 with Rodney King talking, I don't know maybe it's important for the big picture stuff but I don't know if it's super compelling music. Even with that though, I'd say this is a noteworthy release in a bountiful year, check this one out guys.
Here's an interesting EP from late last year, some cool beats with some guitar, I guess it's on a sort of post-punk vibe. It's weird, sometimes it feels like it's maybe a little *too* consistent but then there's times like this where I'm getting re-acquainted with consciousness and the time flies by. You can get a feel for it here https://soundcloud.com/holyromanlabel/blkln-speaking-in-snake-tongue. Seems like an artist worth keeping an eye on.
Yeah I still don't know how to describe the awesome stuff going on here, but I like it a lot. Carried is such a strong track, the interplay between all the rhythmic layers is just blowing my mind, like you've got the sort of bit crushed alarm thing which starts us off and then you've got the bass hits and then there's that other thing I don't even know how to describe it but they're all sort of filling in each others gaps and it's fluid but there's still a rigidity to it and it keeps this pulse and I don't even know, that might not even be entirely accurate, but whatever exactly is going on here, I don't think anyone else is doing it.
Now to catch up on some of the recent Editions Mego output
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25. Anthony Child - Electronic Recordings from Maui Jungle Vol. 1
First Listen
This is pretty cool, Surgeon blasting some beatless music in the jungle. You get a bit of environmental sound but the biggest impact I think is how out-of-the-machine the sound is, like you can hear it pushing out into the world and not hitting any walls (although the rain on the track Midnight Rain is prominent and great too). The sound ranges from that sort of infinite sustain synth drone diffusion stuff to the sort of arpeggiated synth driven stuff that was maybe a bit too common some years with early opn and other folks, to some stuff that gets a bit more irregular and almost sounding like KFW - Occlusions (tho nowhere near as intense as that gets). It's a very long album, an hour and 25 minutes, and the bit that sounded like Occlusions was only like 2 damn minutes. But it's a pretty wide spectrum covered and some stuff will have a sort of irregularity to the way the layers overlap which is pretty cool. I was expecting this to be a bit more homogeneous than what I'm hearing, but the tracks here do manage to mostly find different nuances to explore each time. Though the one-two punch of "The Chief" immediately followed by "The Chief (Reprise)" does seem like a bit much. But still, fans of synth driven ambient music, this is worth checking out.
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26. Robin Fox - A Small Prometheus
First Listen
This is someone I've been meaning to investigate, they had a cool collab with Oren Ambarchi a few years ago but I never got around to checking the solo stuff. Difficult to exactly describe this stuff, experimental and electronic but not like totally freeform sounding. The first track has this sort of thing with like minimal beat elements going out of phase with each other and some sort of synth texture work, it's a cool start. After that track things get slowed way down, where you can really feel the movement of a low frequency oscillation in a synth, while the textural stuff starts to get more abrasive and detailed, and I'm starting to notice distinct pitches in some of it way in the high end. That bit develops really nicely over the course of the track. I guess this was a soundtrack for some kind of modern dance thing? I'm quite enjoying the increase in these sorts of works (there's also the recent output from Gabriel Saloman and Stephen O'Malley's Eternelle Idole off the top of my head, altho O'Malley's thing was ice skating it still counts). Like there's this sense of movement to them always, but they have the freedom to go off and look absolutely nothing like what is typically considered electronic dance music, I'm for it. This album also starts throwing in some field recordings sounding stuff, there's a distinct variety in the approach that each track takes, I'm gonna have to live with this one for a bit but I think it might be up there as far as the experimental electronic stuff of the year is concerned. I haven't really been super hot on Edition Mego's output this year, a lot of stuff that seemed fine or good but nothing that really shook me, this feels like it's breaking that trend tho. Anthony Child was good too, would still put O'Rourke/Ambarchi's Behold above it tho.
This listen is pulling up more peculiarities about the use of drums on here. Like they're present, but the drums that are more made up of noise are pretty low in the mix, they aren't hard hitting. The most percussive elements are like basslines or physical modeling synth stuff, there's always a pitched component to it. There's something to this I think that complicates the whole "angsty rock" element to the aesthetic, since functionally there's so much melody to the album. I've got lots of pondering left to do.
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28. Giant Claw - Deep Thoughts
First Listen
Is this vaporwave? Was his last album, Dark Web? I'm not good with understanding the boundaries of that genre. It's got lots of "ahh" synths and seems to be playing with a musical approach to the defaultism that powered paintfx.biz, I think that's it right? This album seems different than Dark Web, seems to be heavier into the defaultism. I'm not opposed to it by any means, but I don't know about this. There's some cool bits sure, but mostly this just seems like normal cheesy music that isn't dissimilar from the normal cheesy music that happened in the 80s and 90s already and also I dislike. Yeah, this isn't doing it for me. There's stuff goin on compositionally for sure, like there's a lot of development over the course of a song and so I wouldn't begrudge anyone for being into it, but I can't hang.
Sorry if I'm overdoing this all and writing too much, but I'm enjoying it, I'm wanting to get better at getting solid thoughts down quick.
Been hearing about this and also saw it high up on some charts here, so I decided to give it a whirl. This is really something. Improvisations from Dwyer on the church organ while it the church is being cleaned. The improvisations do have a bit of variety between the tracks but can start to feel a little samey, but what defeats that issue for me is the partly the sense of focus and a sense of confident intent to the playing. And also, the way you get pick up on noise from the cleaners, or some random talkative child, or at the end of a piece have a representative from the cleaners ask O'Dwyer to not hold a single note for a long time at a loud volume. Like there's a sort of negotiation to the performance. Probably stuff that's already been talked about plenty and in more detail than I'd give, but yeah, some compelling stuff right here.
I haven't been the best at keeping up with Jeck's work, but I've been checking this one a bit this year. For those unfamiliar, he works a lot with old records building loops and modifying them with effects to create his own sort of stuff on the sort of ambient side of things. This album feels a bit different though, like I guess he had been using a lil bit of keyboard and things in the mix, but they seem to be pretty active here, and there's a lot of emphasis on the digital qualities of the effects that the records are being run thru, like the knobs get twisted all the way sometimes so you really get their digital grain running over. I need to get better acquainted with more of his stuff to really speak on how this fits into the history, but I can say for sure that this is some compelling stuff that feels fresh, especially noteworthy since he's been doing this sorta thing for like two decades now.
I've been snagging stuff from Exit Sense's charts lately, primarily his 80's stuff. Discovered this band on there, who are quite the interesting case. I guess they had a band that made music in the rock styles or whatever, and then they did this band to take that material and warp it all musique concrete style and add in other bits and do a sort of improvised noise thing, but still with the tiniest hint that it's coming at it from rock. It doesn't get all BWWWRRR super intense where you lose detail tho, not that sort of noise. And it's improvised, but not formless. These guys are solid musicians and you really get a sense of them responding to each other and building up some clear, graspable things. Loving it, looking forward to digging into this band further but I've been stuck on this album and the other one from the same year.
Continuing on with a sort of guitar damage noise mood, here's Pete Swanson and some other dude doing some music out of noises. Again though, it's not BWWWWRRRR, there's a really clear form to it. This seems less about sample manipulation than it is about really warped guitar thru effects, I guess. But it feels like it's in the same sort of ballpark, maybe. It's abstract and probably conventionally ugly, but it still feels like a relatively accessible thing in this whole weirdo mode of sound making.
I think I got onto this from a combination of some DBZ chart action and the guys at Mutant Sounds. Some really nice funky soulful songs played pretty straight, except for the presence of some synth gurgles and most notably, crazy ring mod action bringin in some really strange timbres when it's thrown on top of voice and stuff. Takes these from being just some nice songs to something way more distinct and noteworthy, imo.
Here's one from this year. This dude Nick Forte was in the Schematic camp for the early 00's idm happenings, also put out some stuff on Sublight. Missed a few releases, but I saw this one was on Amish Records' Required Wreckers series, and that's got some really far out shit. So I check this, and while there are some elements of rhythm, this is mostly just a bonkers sound adventure sort of thing. From what I recall, the process was he designed some waveforms without listening to them, and then used them as building blocks to assemble these tracks entirely in some multitrack software. Probably some effects were used, but the sound source only being hand drawn waveforms definitely gives this a peculiar hand crafted feel that feels really fresh and not the sort of thing you can get anywhere. Anyone looking for a good brainfloss would do well to seek this one out.
And finished up the work day with this lil thing from one of my favorite deliverers of idm, Team Doyobi. This album, they really started making the beats hit harder, and kicked up the abrasive qualities of the timbres quite a bit. But the melodies are still fun and catchy. Like just listen to this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqsW9VmDpZc. Hits hard, but still has that sense of fun to it, and the way the drums get all dense and intense for the second half is absolutely my kind of jam.
This is Robert Beatty from Hair Police's solo stuff. You might know him better tho as the artist behind recent artwork for Neon Indian, Tame Impala, Damaged Bug, and plenty of other folks. I'm way into what he's doing musically with this project, there's a lot of synthetic sound in here and just in general, a lot of sound. But so much of it is just in crafting these spaces with things reverberating out and small rhythmic synth hits and gurgles and cool melodies but everythings all muted and moody and a little spooky. This is so short though so it's not the most filling meal. I probably should've done part 1 first too. Ah well, next time.
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37. Bryan Eubanks/Stรฉphane Rives - fq
First Listen
So this is on the free improv electronic eai whatever it is. I'm not super familiar with these artists, Heard Rives' album Fibres that was cool, and Eubanks I just saw a couple weeks ago with Tetuzi Akiyama, Jason Kahn and Toshimaru Nakamura and that was really cool. And so I see this relatively new release get talked up enough places where I start to recognize the cover, and I know the names, so hell let's give this a go. It's just a single 30 minute 30 second track. It spends it's opening with some feedback and sine wave and sharp saxophone whines all blending together into this piercing wavy drone. They blend together a lot but as they start to shift around and leave each other a moment to go solo, things start to feel a bit defined and the details of the gestures each musician is making start to really come out. It progresses with a slight build, until the feedback kicks up with distortion and the sound palette gets expanded. This is soon followed by a drop to silence, but things build back up and we really get to see these two play within the range that has been established. The sound can get that piercing quality that can be somewhat unpleasant at loud volumes, so like if this was one of those albums that got talked about a lot and people had to have an opinion on, oh man, it would not be pretty. But for anyone into it, this strikes me as a very solid performance with two people playing wonderfully off each other.
I haven't really talked about the aesthetic stuff on here much. And I'm a big believer in "style is substance" sort of thinking, it's not that I think it's insignificant stuff. Don't know if I'm quite ready for that though. Like there's something going on with the linear presentation of it, like how ezra starts off sounding like it's in familiar territory before that's all blown up and then following that up with a direct reference to the old eccojams and then following that up with Sticky Drama, which seems to have a peculiar relationship with what all the other songs are doing, there's something there I think but still more consideration needed. Yes, I'll listen to it tomorrow too.
Oh hey glad you dug the Annette Peacock LP. I actually have that one on wax (which sounds great). If you're interested in checking her out further at all then
Yeah, 1992 is still a weird track for me. Like it seems like the music behind the Rodney King stuff is all emotionally manipulative and I don't know, there's something going on with it. But yeah, continuing to enjoy this, like the bits where the vocals don't feel like they fit in with conventional values for such things still don't end up feeling distracting/distancing to me, which is what happens a lot for me.
This one I picked up on from GeevyDallas' chart and also a mention somewhere else, like it's hard for me to go just off of one source but once things start repeating then it starts to click in my brain. Anyways, I think this 2015 release would be of interest to ppl who are keeping up with Arca/Lotic/Rabit etc. This maybe is a bit less dance oriented, a bit moodier and covered in filthy textures, but it's driven by smart percussion. Good stuff.
I'm really digging this album. There's this sort of way the tracks develop on here, where they sort of keep a consistency thru the whole thing and just develop and build. It reminds me of the old EP's a bit. Today I have to hurry here so I can't get into detail like I'd want but I'll jam it again soon and really get into it.
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42. Super Djata Band - Vol. 2 Feu Vert 81-82 (Yellow)
Surprised this wasn't in the DB. Ghana band, hypnotic guitar and drum spiraling, exudes joy and beauty, I prefer the blue one but this still has some fantastic material too.
Used to jam this back in the day with friends hanging out and playing videogames, saw DBZ mention E-40 in his log recently and I got nostalgic. I have trouble with rating rap because I really don't follow lyrics in songs at all. I can catch snapshots but piecing together the whole thing, I'm too busy listening to the music you know. And so while I can get down with rap and the sort of musicality of the flow, and especially something like this with the cool west coast synth heavy production with the squeal and the bass, and just straight up great songs like Dusted n Disgusted, I feel like a tourist in NYC telling you where to get the best pizza. Like I'm just not qualified to say "these are the good ones" and judging everything else by omission which implies they're not worthwhile but really it's just I don't have the knowledge and also don't appreciate some of the aspects of the work that can drive greatness. Still though, this album should get on some of my chart action, cause even though it does seem a bit overlong, it's good stuff.
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44. Devin DiSanto & Nick Hoffman - Three Exercises
First Listen
Holy crap this is some fantastic experimental music that'll be up in my 2015 list for sure. It's based around a live performance I guess, but there are clear modifications. The first track is like the sound of setting up and bits of conversations that are just chopped up enough to feel like this is not an absolutely accurate document. It does some cool stuff before finishing with the performers announcing themselves and the place and date. This is then followed up with a different voice providing narration and telling us that thing that just happened, and then we seem to be off into the performance. The performance is compelling, but it's these bits like the narrator or one of the dudes reading off bingo numbers that takes this over the top for me with some good humored fun. I'll get into more details on another listen, but for now I'd say anyone looking for the some cool experimental stuff from this year, this seems worth a listen.
45. Karlheinz Stockhausen - Telemusik / Mixtur
First Listen
For some reason I had never gotten around to this pair of electronic works from Stockhausen. Telemusik was a Japanese commission, formally it does what a recent favorite, Kassel Jaeger - Toxic Cosmopolitanism, had done with taking recordings of traditional music from all around the globe and combining them together with processing and stuff. This one naturally sounds a bit different, having been made 50 years prior. It felt a bit slower maybe than the big electronic works of his, I'm not sure, there's definitely something distinct in how things unfold on this track relative to the others. I'll be returning to this one for sure, it is some top notch stuff. Mixtur is cool too, maybe not quite as immediately interesting to me, like I guess medium notch? Is that a thing? The heart of the sound is all physical instruments, doing the Stockhausen sounding classical work, except there's like ring mod that pops up, and also some sine waves are involved. This is a historically significant piece I guess cause it was performed with the electronic processing happening live, so that's cool. I don't know if this is the best version I'm listening to now, I'll have to dig around a bit. It's good and all but not striking me like the first piece did.
So here's Autechre going overtly pretty. Everything has that procedurally generated feel where they've established elaborate rules for how the melodies and rhythms land, but the exact form they take is generated by software. Or something like that. They've been working with this sort of stuff in the past, and had sort of gotten away from it with Untilted and Quaristice, but their return to the technique is not simply a retread. Because they were never able to get it quite as gorgeous, or allow for as much space as what can be found in these tracks. I think this album is a good way into this part of what they do.
I saw these two open for Battles, I'd been meaning to listen before that but never got around to it. But I was really impressed by what I saw, and grabbed this album at the show. It's good stuff, sorta indie rock I guess but with some quirks. There's singing and guitar and stuff, but the guitar isn't really a guitar, its like a bass ukulele (buke) and whatever a gass is. Guitar bass? Isn't that already a thing? Well, the distortion still mostly makes it feel like guitar, there's just a little subtle difference to it. The songs have a sort of rigid feel, like maybe I want to say math is involved. Not like it's math rock or anything. I dunno. The songs are catchy and fun but with some bite to em, but not like too much bite. Like an aggressive nibble maybe. But yeah a lot of you guys like indie rock, right? Y'all that do should listen to this, it's good.
I saw KAS live earlier this year too, her new stuff sounds amazing. But yeah this albums been out since January or whenever, and I keep returning to it. I have a major weakness for the sounds from all Buchla synths, there's a quality I can't describe to the sound of them but I love it. And also how they use banana plugs, thats the shit. Like other modular synths you take a cord and plug it into two holes on the synth and those holes are done. But with banana plugs, the cord plug has a hole in it. So you can plug another cord in on top, and so on. This allows for more inventive things, I think. But yeah this album, first half you get some songy deals with percussion and fun melodies and warped, functionally wordless vocals. And then for the second half you get something with basically no vox and no beats and just beautiful drifting melodies. So yeah, I'm all about this.
I sort of felt like my internal tempo was slowed with the second half of that last album, so I decided to lean in and intensify the slow. Put on Animal Collective's porch jam. A wonderful part of their discography, with all the irregular strums and tunings of guitars that got them labeled as freak folk before ppl realized the band was way more than that. But this is different than Sung Tongs, it's recorded very simply, seemingly one take on a porch during a cold night, and also the songs are way more melancholy. Lots of death and sad. But it gets quite beautiful.
And finishing the slow, went with this again. This recording is like 4-6 minutes longer than other recordings of this piece, the performers really take their time with it. And I'm glad I slowed my brain down for this one, it really hit me nice this time. Tho that's kinda been every time really. Nothing new to add, I love this the end.
I couldn't go any slower after that, so I spent some time with some silence before having to do a boring work meeting. But now I am on the bus, writing these notes and listening to the first Fenn O'Berg album. It doesn't quite cohere like my favorite from them (and fav of all time) The Return Of Fenn O'Berg. But the components are all there, the humor, the sound mangling, the amazing ability of these three to know when they need to be establishing what's happening and when they need to push their part forward. They finish things off with my favorite appropriation of a bit of music from Moonraker. Yeah, this is good good stuff right here.
So I'm actually listening to the XL records re-release of this that came a year later, with a few tracks changed, a couple removed and a couple added. This is a really distinct one, it's got guitar and breakbeats and sometimes singing, ranges from fun poppy business to stuff that gets pretty heavy. But it's very approachable. Each track takes a pretty different approach on things but still feels like it fits within this aesthetic that manages to feel unique but still operate in familiar territory. This album does not deserve the obscurity that has befallen it, I think a lot of folks would really dig it.
I have a pet theory about this one. So early on in Aphex's career, like around when didgeridoo came out, there was this interview thing with Stockhausen where they played him some of the contemporary electronic music of the time and got his feedback, and then they asked the artists played what they though of Stockhausen's stuff. And so Stockhausen talks about how didgeridoo is rly into the African rhythms but he should try to go less repetitive or something, and Aphex is like "lol old man" or whatever. But then time passes, and Luke Vibert starts doing his Plug stuff where the drums get repeating so fast that they blur into pitch and those pitches get used in the music. My theory is that Aphex looked into this Stockhausen fellow, read about the Four Criteria For Electronic Music that went into Kontakte, which goes over this whole thing with repeating sounds blurring into pitches and using that for music, and then was like "oh hey that's what's going on with Plug" and then takes these ideas and basically takes the ideas of Kontakte and turns it into pop music, creating Hangable Auto Bulb. I could be completely wrong but years later Stockhausen and Aphex were photographed being all chummy. And this really does feel like the ideas of Kontakte turned into pop (as in not academic) music. So I kinda think I might be right. This is some of my favorite Aphex stuff, second only to Syro. Don't skip it.
Yeah, 1992 is still a weird track for me. Like it seems like the music behind the Rodney King stuff is all emotionally manipulative and I don't know, there's something going on with it. But yeah, continuing to enjoy this, like the bits where the vocals don't feel like they fit in with conventional values for such things still don't end up feeling distracting/distancing to me, which is what happens a lot for me.
i thought the Rodney King stuff was a really lazy way of making the album topical while also being this like contemporary take on LA, too. like, Rodney King happened in LA. police brutality continues in 2015. okay. can you expand on this a bit instead of just bringing up this obvious fact, James Ferraro? i need to give this maybe one more listen, but it pales in comparison to Hell, NYC 3:00AM for me.
Hmmm I'm not sure if I'm seeing it as straight topicality tho cause the OJ stuff, still all uncertain though. I do need to listen to NYC Hell again tho for sure.
Week 3 11/19
I mostly just wanted to reply there but figured I'd just edit in on this post when I start listening but I'm in the comedy podcast zone rn.
Did the 2CD version of this with the bonus live set of mostly go plastic stuff. Starting with the mini-album itself, hoo boy what a grab bag. You've got the first two tracks, that have vocals. The first one is sorta rapping, but it kinda works and is maybe one of the poppiest things dudes ever done. But then the 2nd track... I can only imagine if I could make out the words, it would be more embarrassing. It's more rapping, but it's more... I don't know. The production is interesting and makes me think he could have done something cool with an actual rapper. We get two beat driven tracks next, one on the more abstract side of things and then one in the super direct ridiculous fun zone (Astromm-Feck 4, so good). Then we get two sorta far out tracks that are more on the electroacoustic side of things. First one is too short to make much of an impression but then you get a 10 minute thing for the second one. I'm a big fan of the elecroacoustic stuff, but this piece feels sorta bad to me. Like it starts off doing some pretty business and that's all good, but then it gets into some stuff and just theres this shift into a different set of timbres and it takes me out of the whole thing. Like it doesn't work on a linear experiential level. And then after that there's a joy division cover that's kinda dorky but whatever I guess he rly likes that song. The second disc is interesting, the whole live performance is somewhere in between djing and performing live. Like he'll be playing back stuff, but then sort of freeze and go into a moment with all these stretched out digital drones before diving back in. Kinda breaks the flow on Greenways Trajectory but it works in a few spots pretty well. There's a bit of difference from just playing the album loud in a room with people yelling in between songs, but not enough to really pull me back to this much. This is probably first time this decade I pulled this out. Astromm-Feck 4 is a jam tho.
Decided to go with this one from early 2015. Probably cooled on it a little since I first heard, but still into this. The band really refined their sound on this one, and honed in on the repetition and stuff. I do have an affinity for the sort of music that just develops horizontally, and this is another album to scratch that itch (although this one is like a moody rock band with distortion and drums and stuff). There's something more than that though, with the distortion and pounding drums and the way tracks will build up or die down over their course, I still dunno how to articulate it but it's something interesting and keeps me coming back.
Was really struck by the percussion on this go-thru. Like on God's Money V, it's all very elaborate. And also how vocalist lady, she'd been doing her weird style for a bit, but even this early she sounds way confident with it and committed to her universe. Egowar and Before My Voice Fails, hot damn. Jams. I'm probably underrating this one.
This should really be on more charts. A lot of electronic music from 14+ years ago that sounded like the future back then, nowadays it can kind of sound "of its time". Which I don't think is a knock, times have a lot of good sounds. But this album still sounds like the future. There's all sorts of glitchy distortion and abstract sounds, but they're in service of adding character to some really fun melody work that manages to be pretty direct but still feel all refined and classy. And like there's rhythm and repetitions but it all feels bent and different. BETTER THAN 94 DISKONT! CHECK IT YALL.
Huh, I thought I'd added this as The OhSees. That was the name on release anyway. The band later went on to be Thee Oh Sees, and the extra e is for garage rock. This album is before all that and as such, doesn't have that. Having this album under that artist page probably makes more sense tho. But yeah. these are just like really nice songs with male-female voices combining into some weird super form and guitars and drums that are pretty quiet. I like the garage stuff alright, sure, but I really do think that Dwyer's songs are best when it's not like "omg this at the show, I sweated out my kidneys, that's how intense it was" but rather when they're going for "I am at home and this is nice". That's kinda more my speed really. But seriously if all you know of Thee Oh Sees is that they're that band that's all rockin and you gotta see em live, listen to this (if yr in a country where autogenerated youtubes work) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CusNIPo2go
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6. Robin Fox - A Small Prometheus
Nothing new to say on this one really, it still just seems like a really strong release. All sorts of beautiful details. Also I think maybe one of the tracks samples the matchsticks being set on fire for the cover? Something sounds like burning. Did I say that last time? I dunno. But yeah, good experimental electronic stuff right here.
Saw Satie recommend this in 2015 thread and thought it seemed interesting, and I already have been digging M.C. Schmidt's gamelan influenced thing from this year as well so I should be ready. Love how it starts out with all the layers of things sort of not aligning and diffusing each other rather than going right into the straight pull of momentum. The pull emerges slowly, it wavers in speed a little but starts to solidify more as the synth shows up. The density is amazing and there's all sorts of movement, but things do start to clear up as you get further in, and we really start getting into the gamelan stuff. The recording is weird and awesome, or maybe it's some treated effect thing but the use of stereo imaging is really great, like there'll be bits where there's an additional close recording of an instrument and it's only in the right channel, just enough to give that side an extra weight. Yeah, this whole recording/production is fantastically clear and captures a lot of detail, it makes sense that it was originally done for a surround sound thing. Though that mixing can get a bit annoying at times brought down to the two channel level when listened on headphones, only a very minor distraction sometimes, and won't be an issue at all when I blast this on a stereo. I'm not gonna describe the whole 50 minute piece, you can listen to it yourself, but I'll say it earns the duration and is worth the time to sit down with. And then there's a whole other thing after, a 12 minute piece for prepared harpsichord, with all sorts of scrapes and drones and plinky clicks and just tons of fun stuff, in a smaller scale than the huge thing that preceded it. Not toooo much smaller though. Yeah, great album, thanks for the heads up Satie.
I really love it when there's a new release that clicks with me and makes me want to get really familiar with it. But yeah, still not ready to get into anything new with it. I'm gonna start a new format tomorrow that'll be like a list of what I jammed today and then more focused writing for chart notes & so on for one thing. Gonna do it so all the album arts appear in a row at 150x150 and then the list of the albums, I think that'll look better. Maybe 200x200 we'll see.
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