Taplog - Music Diaries - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Tap · 2015-11-05T15:54:49-05:00

TAPLOG I will be writing about my day's listening here, a post for each day. Just getting this started, I'll fill out the structure of the day as it goes and then I will edit in details and thoughts later. Feel free to comment and suggest things just maybe don't give too many suggestions and also really try to sell me on it or I might forget. Oh and if there's anything here you're interested in hearing but you're having difficulty finding, pm me and maybe I can help you find it. 11/5/15 Art Angels by Grimes Then I followed this up with the Improv4Humans podcast, new ep today has musical guest Dan Deacon. It was too distractingly funny though so I had to pause. Got me thinking that I didn't give a close enough listen to Deacon's latest, so let's give that a whirl. Gliss Riffer by Dan Deacon Yeah, I don't know. I like it. But my way in with Deacon was Spiderman of the Rings. I still love that album, because there was a forcefulness to it, and danger and sharp edges and all of that. While the compositions following that album have gotten more intricate, it feels like all the edge has gotten sanded off. I think the songs on this are fine, and I do like a lot of them more than what was on the previous album (and, controversially, a lot of Bromst, which I still need to put on my year chart come to think of it), and would love to experience them live. But I guess it's a combination of the smoothing of the sound and the increased familiarity with who Dan Deacon is that leads to me noticing that there is some sort of nuanced development to his sound, but just not being able to feel it as much. But I wouldn't say it's bad by any means. It's getting too normie in here so now: Flowers Of Evil by Ruth White Oh, this. I love this album. It's one of the many albums that I love that I found through the Creel Pone unofficial reissue label. Lots of musical spoken word that's all been treated to some degree put over synthesizers of varying levels of murkiness. Nothing really in the way of percussion, but in spite of that and all the murk there's still some really clear forms to these songs that makes them seem quite direct. Anyone looking to expand their knowledge of women making far out electronic sounds in the early days of it absolutely must check this one out. I can hear some loud drums being soundchecked at the venue next door now which is simply too distracting so now I'm goin to some talky podcasts, starting with Who Charted. New format is weird but it works for some word listening. But now I need something wordless to go with the working so Precipice by Byron Westbrook This is just some fantastic ambient music right here. But what makes this stand out is that beyond the gorgeous waves of sound, there are all of these weird little elements to the songs, enough to where I've seen this album referred to as electro-acoustic on top of being ambient. What's great about these layers of weird synthesis in the mix is that they're more than just flavor, they're major determinants in the structure. Like in the last track, there's all these gorgeous waves and it's wonderful but then they break apart into some series of notes and the slowness intensifies and I like it a lot. I need more, so KOCH by Lee Gamble This album is still growing on me, a year later. And I still don't know how to describe it. But man oh man I love these timbres. It's some pretty consistent, minimal music. But there's this quality to his music where it's like he's taking something that previously existed and erasing, and the talent is in the space that's created from the erasure. I don't know. I still need more time and more listens. I'm hungry so I'm going to get something going with that while finishing up the Dan Deacon ep of Improv4Humans. I dunno I could imagine a lot of people find this sort of improv comedy to be annoying but this is so much my jam, absolutely loving it. This will be one of those podcast episodes that I actually listen to more than once. Ok now to go through this again so I can figure out what I want to say here Art Angels by Grimes I guess I have a sort of weird relationship with capital p Pop. I enjoy a song here and there but I never really feel compelled to go dive into a whole album. This is a bit different than capital p Pop, with all the indieosyncrasy. But there's still that slick sort of timbre all over the place, and so many filter sweeps. So I do feel put at a distance from this. On the other hand tho, I've seen some people online absolutely losing their shit about how bad this is. And I completely disagree with those folks. This has tons of really fun catchy songs on here. Kill V Maim, Pin, Realiti (which I actually prefer here to the previously released one), Venus Fly, and Scream and Flesh Without Blood are all great as far as I'm concerned. The other songs, nothing strikes me as being especially bad or enough to make me want to skip, but I don't know if I feel a strong pull back to them. I figure I probably won't be pulling out this album in it's entirety all too often (though I'll have it on my phone for a lil bit I think), but I do think this is good stuff. But the overall timbre, like I can never feel at home with this sort of sound, I'll always feel like a tourist with it and so I value the stuff I feel more at home with more. Now let's go with a first listen for something I think I'll feel at home with On Earth by Hans Otte This is another Creel Pone thing that I ordered recently, I'm not sure if there's any copies online. I guess this was some sort of sound art thing that happened in the space pictured on the cover, and man it must have been really cool to be there in person, with all these noises and spoken German coming out of the squares on the ground and also from the ceiling. It starts up and there's a sort of irregular bass throb that gives a pulse to the whole thing, while waves of noise build up from nothing and hang out in the space for a bit. It can get a bit harsh. But I have no problem with that. The structure isn't super overt, very much in the horizontal development mode throughout and I'm more generally aware of change happening than seeing an exact point of it, if that makes sense. Sometimes this sort of thing doesn't work for me so well when it feels like it's just lingering in a certain mode and not pushing into anywhere new, but this uses a small selection of sounds to go all sorts of places, like it gets into a sort of rhythmic thing in the second half of side A with much more... I guess they would be percussive hits? Well, sort of? It's weird. But the focus in aesthetic and constant development in what the piece is is just great to take in. And then Side B sort of repeats the process of Side A, but gets into more feedback drones, it feels similar in shape, but slower and everything hangs a little different in my ear. And more of the German spoken word. Yes, I am at home here. That's it for today on the music front. Going to catch up on adventure time and then get things sorted for the day tomorrow.

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New format time. So I'm gonna post this when I have something written about one album, I want to build up notes for charts so that they're not just a bunch of context-less unfamiliar names. So first I'll have a list of everything listened today (which will continue to be edited after I post the write up if there's more listening today) followed by a close look at something.

11/20

9. No. 3 by Christina Vantzou
10. Metasplice by Metasplice
11. Occlusions; Real-Time Music For Hybrid Digital-Analogue Modular Synthesizer by Keith Fullerton Whitman
12. Let My Children Hear Music by Charles Mingus
13. Musica Su Schemi by Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza
14. Skid Row by James Ferraro
15. Agitations by Lotic
16. Glass Canyon by Marielle V Jakobsons
17. Metasplice by Metasplice
18. Sunday Night, Sunday Afternoon by Marcia Bassett / Samara Lubelski (First Listen)
19. Anna Ricci Interpreta Obras De Andrés Lewin-Richter by Anna Ricci & Andrés Lewin-Richter (First Listen)
20. Precipice by Byron Westbrook
21. Electronic Recordings From Maui Jungle Vol 1 by Anthony Child

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Metasplice by Metasplice (2015)

This album has gotten basically no press as far as I've been able to tell. A shame, too, because this is one of the best electronic releases of the year. It doesn't really fall in with much of the trends going on these days. It can at times almost seem like it would function as some sort of dance music, but typically it goes off the rails. The components, particularly the drums, feel loosely connected to that scene, at least the ones that value an analog grit to the sounds. And the macro structure tends to take on a linear, straightforward progression that wouldn't necessarily preclude it from the dancefloor. And hell, some of it maybe if you tried hard enough and believed in yourself, you could dance to it, like on B2. But most of the time, the way the beats and rhythms seem to eat away at their own edges and force irregularities, the way the patterns of notes play out until something is added that shifts their orientation entirely, and how consistencies develop until some other layer explodes and breaks it make me feel more like I'm locked in a moment, weighed down and immobile while worlds both sparse and busy fill in the space around me. Like a sort of antibody music. The minimal nature of the work makes me think that if you were to scan thru it looking for moments, you would be dissatisfied. But if you submit, you may just find a very special experience that seems hard to come by.

Give it a listen! https://metasplice.bandcamp.com/album/metasplice

[Edited cause I forgot to punch in the Jakobsons album]

Last edited by Tap on 11/22/2015 01:34; edited 1 time in total

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11/21

22. Olympic Mess by Helm
23. Agitations by Lotic
24. Anna Ricci Interpreta Obras De Andrés Lewin-Richter by Anna Ricci & Andrés Lewin-Richter
xx. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. Dogs by Nina Nastasia (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. Some album by The Fall (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. Some live album by The Fall (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. Some Donna Summer album (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. Some Christmas Album (Partial listen during socializing)
xx. The Unforgettable Fire by U2 (Partial listen during socializing)
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Here's this Creel Pone thing I got from a last minute Mimaroglu order before they moved.

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Anna Ricci Interpreta Obras De Andrés Lewin-Richter by Anna Ricci & Andrés Lewin-Richter (1982)

I really enjoy these sorts of albums, where you get a vocalist working with a composer in the experimental/electronic side of things and the exploration of sound is driven so thoroughly by the voice that you see it as being as much the vocalist's album as the composer's. The compositions range in date from the mid 70's to early 80's, and range from clouds of oscillator drones to a completely bonkers plunderphonics thing where Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries is run thru all sorts of filters and effects. But it is all unified by Ricci's classical singing. It integrates perfectly into the music, droning along with the oscillators when needed, or adding the additional end-of-the-world feeling content that is needed for the linear playback of Wagner, to help sell what the effects are bringing out and make it more than just the original thing but with effects. I can understand the grammar of the classical vocals maybe not working for some people, and in some parts it goes kinda full blast while the other music is rather quiet, so this will certainly test you there. But if you can get into them, I think these vocals can give this album its own distinct place in the sea of fringe weirdness.

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11/22

25. Ambiq 2 by Max Loderbauer / Claudio Puntin / Samuel Rohrer
26. The Catastrophist by Tortoise (First Listen)
27. Olympic Mess by Helm

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Olympic Mess by Helm (2015)

I'm not incredibly well-versed in Helm's previous releases outside of what he's put out on PAN. But from what I know of those, this album feels like quite a departure. Those releases would have their share of beatless ambient drone type stuff, but they were coming from a place of doom and gloom. This release flips the script, stepping out of the lower frequencies and landing somewhere opposite. Like it seems cheesy to call it "hopeful" but I'm not sure what else to call it. The change in approach to percussion is also noteworthy. The other releases I heard, you would have some tracks that had some real pounding types of beats. None of those are to be found here, and in fact the minimal percussion that you do occasionally find can feel incidental. Not to say that this music was not deliberated over, it's just that the rhythms that emerge from them don't seem to have the strongest bearing on the way the other layers move (most of the time). The sounds seem to be somewhat diverse in source and character, but are processed and mixed into a relatively consistent ambient loop soup. Except for the track towards the end, Strawberry Chapstick. That track is a pitched down ASMR video, with incredibly minimal additional content. I still don't really understand how that works with the rest of the album, and it kind of takes me out of it. But it does contribute to the "experimental musicians referencing ASMR stuff" trend that's been going on this year, so that's cool at least. And it's easy to forgive when everything else is so on point.

Last edited by Tap on 11/24/2015 09:29; edited 1 time in total

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11/23

28. Mutant by Arca
29. Peau Froide, Léger Soleil by Vainio & Vigroux
30. Of Snowdonia by Daedelus
31. Live Occlusions (3) • (4) by Keith Fullerton Whitman
32. Two Aspects Divided by Zaïmph

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Two Aspects Divided by Zaïmph (2015)

This one is difficult to find words for. Two side long tracks from Marcia Basset's Zaïmph project, going into some strange digital territories. The first track has all of these timestretched sounds, but there's something very unstable about the stretching. There's a sort of repeating form that will emerge from how certain tones will hang there in the mix for a bit, but there is a looseness to it that keeps everything feeling off-center. I love it. Time is dismantled, and I end up with this wonderful untethered feeling. Probably boosted by my affinity for the dry sounding digital grit and distortion that color the whole thing. And then with the second track, you get something a bit more solid to start with via a strict programmed beat. There's guitar drone as well, and both are run thru all sorts of effects and sort of alternatively swallow each other, and then within the murk they create, some vocals appear (though not strongly, on account of the murk). And much like the first side, we just sort of ride out on this as the rhythm takes adjustments here and there, and the noises develop into something even more mangled. There's some big shifts towards the end though, first by seemingly giving in to the noise drone foundation and erupting it all over the surface, but then by bringing back the rhythm in a more solid form. It finishes somewhere that finds a compromise between the two, and the whole process is quite enthralling. Front to back, this one is something special.

Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no digital copy of this floating around anywhere, and I'm not really equipped to rip records. But you can hear an excerpt of it here: https://soundcloud.com/za-mph/new-exclusive-digital-stonehenge-excerpt it's such a tease tho cause there's so much more track on the album

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11/24

33. Tender Buttons by Broadcast
34. Key Nell by Gescom
35. Electro/Acoustic by Jack Tamul
36. The Meters by The Meters
37. Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa by Kemialliset Ystävät
38. Bytes by Black Dog Productions
39. Olympic Mess by Helm
xx. Concert: James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never Live @ Neumos

No chart note writeup today, cause I'm gonna be seeing James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never later tonight. I'll edit in my thoughts on the show afterwards.

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James Ferraro + Oneohtrix Point Never Live @ Neumos, 11/24/15

Wow, this was an amazing show. There were so many youths. You guys, I think this Pitchfork outfit might have some pull with the youths. They were out in full force. After a bit of nondescript ambient playing over the speakers, James Ferraro emerged on stage with a sweet hat. Things started off the same as Skid Row, but the intro led into an extended airplane engine drone. Things were loud, but eventually that dropped to make way for an instrumental version of White Bronco. That had me thinking it would all be instrumental, which was reinforced by the track being followed by some awesome improvisation that worked with the aesthetic of the album but got way more spaced out. But then dude picks up a mic and fucking kills it for Pollution. It goes back into instrumental versions for a while, I'm not entirely sure about which tracks got played but I believe it was Street Freaks and Thrash & Escalate with more improv in between. But then he picks up the mic again to finish with To Live and Die in L.A. It is incredible. Skid Row was maybe in there too, I'm not sure it's all a blur. One of the screens that OPN will use later has the album cover, and I only just notice that the album cover seems to evoke TV snow. Do youths even remember TV snow? It makes me think that this album is really not so much about the direct messages about police brutality and stuff, but more about the way this information about Riots and Rodney King and OJ was delivered. Like that sample where the newscaster interrupts discussion of the riots to announce the station's call letters, that has to be important. Still more consideration to be done but the album continues to shoot upwards w/r/t my esteem.

I was in the thick of the crowd for Ferraro, but I decide to hang back for OPN. And I was right to do so, because holy shit, was it ever loud. I'm in the back but still on the floor area so I can appreciate all the strobing lights. He's mostly playing Garden Of Delete straight thru, but with a little bit of tweaking. I Bite Thru It and Ezra basically switch places, the interludes get cut and replaced with different filler things, and Child of Rage sadly gets cut, Lift seemingly gets extended a great deal and Freaky Eyes is placed after. There's some of those Nate Boyce visuals playing on screens at both sides of the stage. What's most fantastic though is that Lopatin is doing live (extremely processed) vocals and he's got some guy playing guitar, and there appears to be some additional (or at least exaggerated) percussion. This really emphasizes the directness of the songwriting. It is so loud, and everything comes together for a full on assault on the senses. It was an amazing experience, and then to top it all off we get a new track for the encore that goes a bit more ambient and uses the "Ahhhhh" vocals to just completely dissolve the listener before wrapping up. If you have the chance to go to this you absolutely must. I have to wake up at 7am tomorrow, and this was so worth it. It is a very similar experience to the album, but tweaked in all the right ways to make it work perfect in this context.

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11/25

40. Anoxia by L A N D
41. Agitations by Lotic
42. Izipho Zam by Pharoah Sanders
43. Skid Row by James Ferraro
44. A Small Prometheus by Robin Fox
45. Technological Music Vol. 2 or, Regarding, in Addition to Concerns Previously Explicated, Matters of Process, Artifice, and Verisimilitude by Kyle Bruckmann
46. Hysteria by Drainolith
47. Cold Hot Plumbs by Damaged Bug
48. Magnetoception by Joshua Abrams
49. Racconto Psicofonico Dell'aldila by Trans Vita Express
50. Vier Politische Kompositionen Für Tonband by Max E. Keller (First Listen)
51. Musica Electroacústica by Andrés Lewin-Richter (First Listen)

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Cold Hot Plumbs by Damaged Bug (2015)

So of course my heart belongs to John Dwyer's first outing with Thee Oh Sees, Cool Death Of The Island Raiders. But ever since he started up this synth-driven side project Damaged Bug, I've been thinking that maybe Cool Death isn't secure as I first thought it. I don't think this album or his first under the moniker quite top it, but the potential seems to be there. His songwriting feels very straightforward, probably related to how much of it he does. There's no flashy acrobatics, just an efficient machine for song delivery. I'm not the hugest fan of Thee Oh Sees shifting into louder rollicking territory, like I enjoy it a great deal certainly, and it rules live, but it's not as satisfying an experience as the calmer stuff is for me. But the efficiency of the machine combined with how long they have been working in the area they settled in has led to them growing a little stale for me. But by exploring the synth for songcrafting, the machine is finding some fresh takes. The differences in albums (well, the two there are so far) feel more pronounced than a jump from one recent Thee Oh Sees album to the next. And then to top it off, the music explored on the project is getting closer to the mellow, relaxed vibe of Cool Death. Cold Hot Plumbs actually gets a bit away from that w/r/t where Hubba Bubba was sitting, the drums are punchier and everything's a bit shinier or clearer, and there's more noise and energy. But the songs are catchier here, so I prefer this one. That still kinda puts it at the level of Thee Oh Sees' catchiest loud rock stuff. I enjoy it for sure, and blast it a bunch. But I am hopeful that as this project continues, maybe it'll land somewhere closer to the song Grape Basement on here. Just super mellow. That would be cool.

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END OF WEEK 3

Listens: 51
Albums: 43
First Listens: 6

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WEEK 4

11/26

1. Dude Incredible by Shellac
2. Music For The Fire by People Like Us & Wobbly
3. Skid Row by James Ferraro
4. Tokyo by Keith Fullerton Whitman
5. Percussion Und Elektronik by Klaus Hashagen
6. Vier Politische Kompositionen Für Tonband by Max E. Keller
7. Gamelan Descending A Staircase by Arturas Bumšteinas
8. Wald by Pole
9. Fq by Bryan Eubanks / Stéphane Rives
10. Musiques Expérimentales by André Almuro
11. Ritratto Di Giovane / Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul by Françoise Barrière / Christian Clozier
12. Clarinet And String Quartet by Morton Feldman

I'm doing the family thing in December, so for this holiday I'm looking over some cats and having a music feast. Might get a couple things written up.

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Skid Row by James Ferraro (2015)

I'm still not as familiar with Ferraro's recent work with vocals as much as I should be before writing this. I've appreciated a lot of his work, and not appreciated a lot more (dude has a lot of work). And those recent vocal things, I didn't think they were bad or anything but they never really stuck with me. This album though has wormed it's way into my listening as much as my favorite stuff from him though (Far Side Virtual/Condo Pets). This new one continues on with the vocals from other recent work, but they're presented differently. Honestly it might just be that he has more confidence on the mic (that's how it came across live). I'm not sure though, there was something distracting about them in previous outings that don't seem to be present here (I'll need to revise this later). It also helps that I feel like I have a good handle on the conceptual hook of this album. There's all sorts of buzzwords and soundbites, lots of newscasters, the LA riots and OJ simpson trial and skid row all pooling together in a way where they all lose their individual meanings and become readily consumable turmoil flavored entertainment, or something. I don't know, figuring this one out will probably be a process, but I still feel like I have a handle on it. Engaging with it has been a lot of fun, and I'll be glad to see the whole process continue.

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Tokyo by Keith Fullerton Whitman (2015)

Tokyo is the 2nd entry in the Traveloglog series from Whitman, where he combines a recording of a live set with heavily processed recordings/content from the area around where the performance took place. This is I think the more successful of the two, both in the live performance itself and the supplemental content. It starts out with lots of drones that don't exactly sound electronic sourced, but are definitely wearing a heavy coat of it, with hints of a real world space poking in every now and then. It is very effective at pulling me in, building up and eventually taking over the environment. It eventually fades away, and we get into the second track, the live performance. All sorts of irregular filtered stabbing starts to go, but then a more natural sounding buzz drone starts to sound, and then "ACTION" starts to repeat, as sounds from a nearby arcade are pulled in. "RELOAD!". The track will earn it's later chaos though, so it pulls back a bit and spends some time expanding the palette of the drones and the irregular synth notes popping up. The space between the notes is filled in slowly, taking its time to build the form, allowing for moments where a note can just ring out and we can sit with it for a bit. Eventually though, a tiny eruption occurs and the density builds up to make for a solid shape, not as a climax but as the next state of being, since the area gets just as much attention as the spacier beginnings. It develops in intensity a little bit, but more prominently in rigidity, as it starts to become these layers of different timed repeating strikes, playing around there for a while before slowing things down to a crawl to close out. And then we finish with a weird bird song thing. I'm a big fan of KFW, and though I wouldn't recommend this to someone to start off with, this strikes me as being some of the best stuff he's done when looking off the path of his main releases.

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Wald by Pole (2015)

I always see Pole's first few numbered records being championed, but those never quite clicked me with as much as his previous album, Steingarten. There was just more tonal color to everything, the old stuff always struck me as being a little drab. So since that last album was all the way back in 2007, you can imagine I was quite excited to see he had a new album coming out in 2015. My first encounter with it was actually quite a few months before release, when he did a short USA tour performing the full album. I was worried as time went on that the album wouldn't live up to the excellent night of dancing it gave me then, but it has stood up to many bedroom listens and stayed highly regarded in my eyes. The inspiration for this album was walks through the woods, and it comes through in the dense layers of sound and the consistency they create. Any sort of melody that is happening is operating very minimally, just different layers cycling through 2 notes at different intervals, colliding in various ways to make different shapes with their gaps. Though sometimes a small thing will pop up with a bit more flexibility in note choice, but they are always a lonely, unaccompanied lead. The bass is of course thick and dubby, and with the limited tonal movement it builds a solid foundation for the structures of percussion and tone to stand on, with the majority of it's life coming from activity in rhythm. It all makes for a very refined dance music experience that I think is among the year's best.

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11/27

13. Dan'l Boone by Dan'l Boone
14. Without Knowing Why by Andrea Pensado (First Listen)
15. Still Life In Concrete by Ed Herrmann (First Listen)
16. Kannon by Sunn O))) (First Listen)

I'll be editing this one as the day goes, just wanted to get some words in on this first one right away.

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Dan'l Boone by Dan'l Boone (2014)

Royal Trux was one of those bands that I kept hearing about but it wasn't until I saw how well regarded they were with people here (particularly Twin Infinitives) that I decided to check them out. And I haven't gone much deeper than that album for Royal Trux, but I did notice that Neil Hagerty did this project in 2014 with Alex Moskos (aka Drainolith) and Nate Young from Wolf Eyes and someone named Charles Ballas who I'm unfamiliar with. And while it's certainly different, it does seem to carry the heavily damaged rock music spirit of Twin Infinitives, and I'd recommend it for anyone who jams that. Things are a bit cleaner here, and there's a bit more space in how everything is arranged. But it still does that thing where it's sort of technically rock music if you squint at it but the structures are all warped with the world at the verge of tearing at the seams. Except a lot of it is also somewhat muted so sometimes it's simultaneously peaceful and also perpetually falling apart. Some of the most adventurous music I've heard from this decade that uses guitars, don't skip this one.

Last edited by Tap on 11/29/2015 03:05; edited 1 time in total

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11/28

17. Electronic Recordings From Maui Jungle Vol 1 by Anthony Child
18. Twoism by Boards Of Canada
19. Load Blown by Black Dice
20. Rara Speaks by Lucky Dragons
21. Pieces For Kohn by Thomas Hamilton
xx. Music Podcast: Now Is - Charles Rumback
22. Trioism by Paul Motian (First Listen)
23. Without Knowing Why by Andrea Pensado
24. Perils by Perils (First Listen)
25. Eliminated Artist by Yarn/Wire And Pete Swanson

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Music Podcast: Now Is

Going to take this opportunity to call out this excellent new music podcast, Now Is. It's based out of Chicago and primarily focused on musicians in that city. What happens is a musician is interviewed about a playlist of music selected by the interviewer, and the musician tries to a) figure out what the song is or who's playing and b) provide some insightful thoughts or stories related to the music. There's some silly editing sometimes where things people say get looped sometimes, functionally I think it's for relatively cleaner edits in the interview but also it gives the show a bit of personality. Recent episodes have been with jazz-oriented musicians and that's led to lots of interesting discoveries that I've been following up on with good results. But there's been stuff with like a dude from U.S. Maple and Olivia Block, so there's been picks from all over the map. And what's great about it is the insight the interviews bring out. Like in this Charles Rumback interview, he pointed out that this track Paul Motian Trio - It Should Have Happened a Long Time Ago had this really interesting thing with wide ranging dynamics, in that it didn't just come in parts but from moment to moment it could come loud and soft, which you can get in some free improv stuff but there's a really clear sense of form with this track, and I'm just like "yeahhhh". And then also some stuff that makes Nina Nastasia sound awesome, I was already meaning to listen to her after I heard some at a party recently, but yeah now I really am meaning to. And then more reminders that I need to listen to more Town & Country and also stuff that's making me go back and think maybe Broken Shadows is better than Science Fiction for Ornette Coleman, yeah, this is a good music podcast if anyone is in the market for one.

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Without Knowing Why by Andrea Pensado (2015)

I didn't really know much about Pensado going in, I think I saw an interesting description of it a little bit before it was released, and then I sorta forgot about. But then I saw it for cheap on Boomkat the other day so I figured why not. And I'm glad I did, because this is some fantastic noise. It's very digital computer type sounding, and thru that Pensado creates this really brittle harsh distortion. My preferences are less toward the overwhelming wall noise and more towards the electroacoustic/dynamic mode, and this album is certainly more in the second camp. At the center of it all are the vocals, whisper quiet at times but sometimes going to a moderate shout, and it feels like these different noise layers are generated that are sort of centered on a specific frequency. So you get this really crisp separation to them and the interesting things that each layer is doing aren't at all hidden. Very much a case where the excellent production is in service of what the music intends to accomplish. There is certainly still a harshness to the noise, and so this may not be everyone's thing. But who knows, maybe the clarity of action makes it a good candidate for an entry point into this sort of thing.

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Perils by Perils (2015)

Benoit Pioulard & Kyle Bobby Dunn. It's good. Glacial drones and singing that fits in perfectly when it pops in, and sometimes the guitar picks things up into relatively faster speeds. The pacing alternates those modes a bit and that helps keep things from feeling samey. I'm not ready to write it up yet but I just wanted to say anyone looking for a recommendation, this is my recommendation for everyone right now. Give it a listen https://pioulard.bandcamp.com/album/perils

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11/29

26. Reflekzionz by Ekoplekz
27. Symeta by Byetone
28. Telemusik / Mixtur by Karlheinz Stockhausen
29. Cardinal by Philip Jeck
30. Metasplice by Metasplice
31. Four Forms by Rie Nakajima
32. Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock by Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock (First Listen)

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Four Forms by Rie Nakajima (2015)

It's always nice to see a debut recording from someone close to 40. Though she's not completely green, having been active in the art and music worlds for a while now. I like a lot of music that's made of scrapes and clanks, but this one is really quite special. The sounds are all generated from these household objects with little motors and things that are triggered and manipulated live, and it makes for this peculiar cross between something very mechanical, but with the feel of a live human hand guiding the proceedings. I'm not really familiar with anything that gets quite into this niche, and I love it a lot. The recording is impeccable, all sorts of details presented very clearly, and lots of spatialization that tickles my spine with that ASMR sort of feeling on headphones. Each of the four pieces gets in and keeps moving, spending enough time to really develop ideas but never lingering long enough to get too comfortable. There's a lot of playing around with rhythms and sometimes it pushes into a drone shape, carrying that momentum into the progression of the drone. And sometimes the noise floor is kept lower, and the track is carried along by all of the overlapping rhythms. Phenomenal stuff, a must listen for all fans of scrapes and clanks.