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September 2006 Wolf Eyes & Anthony Braxton Black Vomit [Victo, 2006] #1: Sombre noisescape provided by Wolf Eyes with clanking metal and bestial grunts through lots of reverb. Braxton's alto sax multiphonics blend with electronic buzzing. Then some more pitch-based playing, and a great sax duo with Wolf Eyes' John Olson. There's no track break, but at 22:23 they play their song “Stabbed in the Face” from Burned Mind. Heavy electronic drum pulse with noise and screaming. #2: Starts with a nice little conversation in which Braxton chooses to play Wolf Eyes' “Black Vomit”, another song from Burned Mind. Similar to “Stabbed in the Face”, but notably features Braxton's best playing on this album. Recommended: 2, 1 The Flying Luttenbachers Cataclysm [ugExplode, 2006] Brutal prog. Features Mick Barr of Orthrelm and Octis on guitar alongside the usual players. One of the best Luttenbachers' albums yet! #1 is a really good, densely complex rock song. #2 & #4 are excellent new recordings of older pieces. #7 is a Messiaen pipe organ piece arranged for guitars and bass (with minimal percussion). Recommended: 1, 2, 4, 7 various Femme Toupee 1 [self-released, 2006] Compilation of local experimental musicians. 1. Liz Allbee -- groans and clatters 5. Core of the Coalman -- electronic viola atmospheres (long) 6. Conor Prischmann – nice ambient glitch stuff with synth line 7. Porest – cool little kid talking nonsense 9. crazy human sheep sounds from Liz Allbee Recommended: 1, 5, 7, 9, 6 March 2006 Syntopia Quartet Mars [Nemu, 2005] Jazzed up contemporary classical on violin, clarinets, bass and percussion. There are a lot of composed (and improvised) lines over fairly steady (though meter-shifting) rhythms. Some free stuff, but it never gets too wild. My favorites are the eerie, subdued, free pieces (2, 4, 8). Recommended: 2, 4, 8 Mord Christendom Perished [Southern Lord, 2005] First full-length from Norwegian black metallers, Mord (not to be confused with the Czech, German or US black metal bands also called Mord). Solid black metal with good production. Appropriate amount of bleak, defiant brutality. Definitely in the vein of recent Norwegian black metal like 1349 – crunchy, heavy and well-produced, yet not as chaotic or evil as the crude music of the golden age of church burnings and murders. #2 features some buzz saw samples. #5 has a corny guitar line to be avoided. #7 has a weird chord progression that doesn't sit very well in the blackness. Great stuff. Rec: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 Lair of the Minotaur The Ultimate Destroyer [Southern Lord, 2006] Thrash sludge from members of 7000 Dying Rats and Pelican. Chugging guitars, and gruff but intelligible vocals. Simple heavy drum beats. A Cattle Decapitation member does backing vocals on #6. Pretty solid, but I'm not into stoner rock so much. Worth adding to up the metal count at KUSF. Better than other metal we've added recently. --JFH Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid The Exchange Session Vol. 1 [Domino, 2006] Drums & electronics duo. Free jazz at the intersection of In a Silent Way and Gang Gang Dance. Kieran Hebden is Four Tet, by the way, so there's a bit of that sound mixed in too. Four to the floor, crude delay-pedal psychedelia with a cool jazz vibe. #1 is my favorite – a mellowed out trumpet moan similar to the quiet rubato sections of the aforementioned Miles Davis album. #3 has more fiery horns and noise sections. Recommended: 1, 3 Juan Torres El organo melodico vol 2/8 Dolor del estomago Ill organ bachelor pad renditions of pop standards. Sometimes twisted a little beyond a normal rendition, but generally pretty straight. Very nice in its kitschy sort of way. Mostly just organ with some live drums and occassional background vocals. Last track is nearly 10 minutes of brutalsfx noise. Daniel Menche Concussions [Asphodel, 2006] Heavy rhytmic noise. He seems to be employing Cowell's ideas of rhythmic harmony, where rhythmic ratio replace pitch ratios. CD1 is a single slowly-evolving piece. Great. Various Freenoise: Fusion [Freenoise, 2005] I didn't like the packaging of the album, but the music turned out to be pretty good. 1.slow sine waves with very quiet white noise in background 2.this one is pretty good 3.sax chirps, feedback and electronics 5.hissing/howling with phaser propellors 6.harsh howls 12.harsh contact mic noise 14.harsh noise w/ tinny nostalgia music 15.noise plus drums 17.short free rock Argumentix Hoarse Whisperer (self-released, 2005) Amateur vocals and moans through lots of delay over lo fi music and noise. Most of the non-noise music consists of commercial recordings, occassionally slowed down and usually through heavy delay, with karaoke vocals over the top. Nothing really too captivating here. Jericho Hill Sons of Anarchy [2005] Weird folk/alt-rock sort of deal. Nothing really grabs me. Material is maybe not fully developed. Production is trying to be slick and falling short. They're heading toward being quirky enough to win me over, but are far from it. Dark Skies s/t [Empty] 60's rock inspired jam rock. Probably not KUSF's thing. On top of that, the vocals are a deal breaker (terrible). Plus they mis-spell both “theremin” and “saxophone” in the album credits. Come on, dudes. Ella Forever Young single [Marian, 2006] 11 versions of one song. House/pop like the sort of thing Cher was making hits with in the 90s. But the music is crude and generic enough to make this more like the Euro club hits of the early 90s. Energy 92.7 might like it. The Age of Rockets The Drive Home [Astronaut/Dinosaur, 2006] Like Fanatic says, indie rock influenced by Kid A and Mum. Pretty bland though. Their pop stuff (#4) is way more interesting than their “experimental” stuff. Indie rock can do better than this. Ajamu Akinyele Black Magic: The Cyber Jazz Experience [PearlJazz, 2006] Smooth jazz claiming MeShell Ndegeocello and Prince as influences, and performing songs by Burt Bacharach and Sade. The music souonds a lot better than my mental picture of what that recipe makes (they're at least pulling it off), but it's still not for KUSF. Bricks for Shoulders You Are, Therefore I Am [Far Between, 2005] Metalcore that's (not suprisingly) nowhere near as good as the dudes that were doing this thing right in the mid 90s (Cave In, Botch, etc.), and even kind of worse than most of the newer stuff I've heard. The vocals are particularly bad. Not heavy enough at all. I require some serious fucking screaming in my metal, and these guys are basically just talking loudly. The music's totally boring and all sounds the same. Fresh Air Slowly Coming Along LA hip hop on the positive tip. Laid back soul stuff like Tribe Called Quest, Black Eyed Peas, etc. Pretty good, but I don't know if they're doing anything new here. Maybe too commercial-sounding at times. Worth playing for the group, especially if we're short on hip hop. I'll never play this though. Television Buzz Treasure Chest [Glass Bag, 2005] 4-song EP. Some sort of revival music that should've been left resting. Bland music, kinda bad vocals. The Gentlemen Scoundrel s/t Indie pop music that harkens back to “alternative” rock like the Flaming Lips, Beck and Presidents of the USA. Lo-fi production adds a little charm. Lots of weird hard panning. Kind of bad, but there's a certain sincerity here that appeals to me. I think one guy played and recorded everything. Play this for some weirdo who likes pop music and is willing to play some that is poorly mixed and full of digital distortion. They might dig it. Damone Out Here All Night EP [Island, 2005] The music's a little like what Judas Priest might sound like nowadays, but the vocals are really light female vocals like Ashley Simpson or something. Avril Lavigne sounds like DRI compared to this shit. This is total commercial butt rock trying to hit it big. Sucks ass. Mike Steed Mister Success [2005] I think this qualifies as adult contemporary. Not for KUSF. Mario Pavone Sextet Deez to Blues [Playscape, 2006] Slightly off-kilter jazz. Pavone is a bassist and he likes to switch things up by giving the bass or piano the melody and letting the traditional lead instruments accompany them. Free/loose melody lines played over a groovy foundation. Reminds me of Don Cherry for some reason. #1 has a couple nice Anthony Braxton moments where a highly contrasting line is played over the main groove. For the most part, though, he keeps it swinging. #7 opens with a 3-minute bass solo with sparse accompaniment. The rest of the band joins in and there's a tuba solo. Rec: 1, 3 Rick Reed Dark Skies at Noon [Elevator Bath, 2005] Three tracks of awesome minimal buzzing akin to that of guest musician Keith Rowe (of AMM). Rick Reed plays oscillators, short wave radio, field recordings, etc. There is frequently a sonically rich buzz held constant for 4 minutes or so while small noises click in the background and harmonics slowly fade in and out. Then it slowly morphs into another buzz and the piece continues moving through its slow but careful structure. At once static and dynamic, full of interesting timbral action. Recommended: 2 (feat. Rowe), 1, 3 September 2005 Derek Bailey, Carpal Tunnel [Tzadik, 2005] It seems master guitar improviser Derek Bailey was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and decided to work around his disability in his playing rather than undergo surgery. This CD documents his attempts in recordings made every few weeks after the diagnosis. “Explanation and Thanks” (#1) features Bailey explaining the situation while accompanying himself on guitar like a folk balladeer just before breaking into song. I'd rather stick with the solo guitar myself. The music is mostly quiet, ambling electric guitar with little processing other than a volume pedal and occasional clipping. Played like a pro. Rec: 4 or any but 1 Kim Cascone, Dust Theories [c74, 2001] Glitched out sine waves, granular synthesis and all the other good stuff you can do with the Max/MSP software. 1 is mostly blips, but some long tones/drones floating in the background. 2 is quieter with lots of reverb. 3 is short and noisy. 4 is #3 remixed into a hip hop beat (this is the track for the less adventurous). 5 is more soothing and droney. Henry Flynt, Purified by the Fire [Locust, 2005] A single 40-minute track with Mr. Flynt laying down blues licks on his electric fiddle over a tambura drone. This sounds more like the Velvet Underground than the ragas of Pandit Pran Nath or LaMonte Young (with all of whom Flynt was associated). It's actually very similar to the viola in “Venus in Furs.” It doesn't have much of a developed or refined progression to my ears. I wouldn't be surprised if this was Flynt's first attempt at this sort of thing. His playing has a very exploratory feel, like he's experimenting with how different things will fit with the tambura. His violin has some great distortion when he pushes it a little. Volcano the Bear, Catonapotato [Digitalis/Broken Face, 2005] Live recordings from various places in Europe. They're pretty rough with slight flubs, feedback, audience whoops and that characteristic distant sound of live recordings. Most of it is melancholy lo-fi stuff, slightly psychedelic/spacey. #4 is high-energy free jazz (sax and drums). #6 is minimal experimental improv. A Middle Eastern folk vibe runs throughout the whole thing. Two guys playing a wide range of instruments (guitar, sax, assorted percussion, vocals, etc.) in a wide range of styles. Rec: 6, 8, 4, 2 August 2005 Cock ESP, Costes, etc., We Would Be Happy: A Noise Opera [Sunship, etc., 2005] An American girl (Elyse Perez of Cock ESP) goes to Paris and meets an unstable Frenchman (Jean-Louis Costes), who tries to seduce her, then rape her. She evades both and ends up killing him. The story could easily take place in the same time as the album progresses (57 minutes), or even a shorter a mount of time. The lyrics are often childish, vulgar and hilarious. Also often processed and buried to the point of unintelligibility, which aids in the presentation of ambiguous and confusing series of events. The listener can just barely tell what's going on, but it is clear that it is not pleasant. The vocal delivery (of Elyse in particular) is sometimes annoying, but this actually works well with the feeling of the piece. The scenario and musical genre itself are both very uncomfortable, so it's fitting that the vocals are too. It also seems in character. She somehow won me over when she quotes the Francophile, Simone, from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The music was created by a daisy chain of noise artists (including Lasse Marhaug and K.K. Null) swapping source material and reworking it. Most of the music is based on walls of harsh noise and short delay loops. The contributions by Cock ESP and Marhaug are particularly effective and well-developed. A bleak and depraved work. It haunts me. Mudboy, IV: This Is Folk Music [Free Matter for the Blind, 2005] Spacey, psychedelic kraut drones played on a circuit bent organ. Often long tones played over an upbeat pulse reminiscent of Phil Glass. Lo-fi Tangerine Dream with ambling melodic explorations. Maybe that makes it lo-fi Jean Michel Jarre. Rec: 1, 2, 4 Combatwoundedveteran, This Is Not an All-Red Neon Body [No Idea, 2005] 42 short songs ranging from 10 seconds to 1:37. Furious, silly grindcore like a slightly-less-extreme Anal Cunt, or maybe the Locust without the synth. Occasional dumb samples between songs. This is a collection of tracks from 7 inches and compilations with some other rarities. Tracks 28-42 seem to be a little more “refined” than the earlier tracks. I would guess they're from later in the band's career. Rec: 28-42, 16, 24, 14, 21 Skraelings, Ash Is Ash [Free Matter for the Blind, 2005] Super lo-fi simple repetitive delay pedal stuff. Music played out of a window and recorded from the alley below with lots of street sound mixed in. Much white noise in the form of tape hiss, wind noise and car whooshes – often much louder than the “music”. The music itself features a lot of white noise too. Maybe that's a fucked guitar? Track 1 is the recorder talking to the performer. Track 2 is the recorder running from the performance room, down the steps, to the alley. Tracks after that happen almost at random points in the music. The final track is a spiritual affirmation reading about metaphorical self-immolation. The Cortet, HHHH [Unsounds, 2005] British free improv quartet featuring John Butcher, possibly the best contemporary saxophonist. The music explores different textures, timbres and layers of sound. 3 of 4 musicians play acoustic instruments, but most of the time all of them are making “electronic” sounds. It's often hard to tell which instrument is producing which sound. Exploratory improvised music of the highest caliber. Thollem McDonas, Solo Piano [Pax, 2005] Short, mostly tonal piano solos. Seems to be coming from more of a classical (rather than jazz) background. No extended techniques here. Melody factors in heavily and rhythm also plays an important role. I like the minimal, atonal stuff the best, but unfortunately there isn't much of it. Recommended: 9, 8, 10 Sightings/Hrvatski, Split Seven Inch (Div/orce Series 3) [Ache, 2005] Side Hrvatski starts out with junky breakbeats and light keyboard melodies, then switches up to weirder drum n bass/breakcore type stuff. Side Sightings is a noisy groove. Power electronics guitar over a hokey, tonal eighth-note bassline. 45RPM. Recommended: Hrvatski Thuja, Pine Cone Temples [Strange Attractors, 8/2/2005] Minimal, melancholy psychedelia. Many tracks sound like a hybrid of dark ambient and minimal free improv, reminding me of the more ambient tracks on the first Kraftwerk albums (disc 1, tracks 2+4). Some tracks more prominently feature more conventional psych guitar ambling (disc 1, tracks 5+6). Rec: disc 1: 2; disc 2: 1 & 2. All clean. Lozenge, Undone [Sickroom, 2005] Free jazz musicians and improvisers playing weird, noisy rock music on accordian, junk percussion and other instruments. Includes Kurt Johnson (formerly of the Flying Luttenbachers) and Boris Hauf (of Efzeg). Elements of prog, free jazz and circus/calliope music (esp. 6 & 10). Somewhat similar to Uz Jsme Doma. Rec: 14, 12, 1, 9, 13 (rock), 4 (free), 11 (circus). All clean. June 2005 Anthony Braxton/Matt Bauder, 2 + 2 Compositions [482 Music, 2005] Sparse and quiet structured improvisation. An exploration of sounds, timbres, etc. rather than melody, harmony and rhythm, which are largely absent due to the music's sparsity. Braxton calls it Falling River Music, and it's pretty different from everything I've heard from him. Braxton's scores for these pieces are insturctions for “sound rather than pitch” consisting of colorful paintings with mysterious doodles (the images printed on the album art are the composition titles, however, not the scores). Braxton's pieces (2 & 4) are a bit denser than Bauder's (1 & 3), and all four sound great. Bauder and the percussionist are Braxton's grad students at Wesleyan. Braxton just turned 60 this June, but continues growing and changing. He recently sat in with Wolf Eyes to give you an idea of his range. The Contemporary Jazz Quintet, Actions 1966-67 [Atavistic, 2005] Danish free jazz featuring a saw. That instrument's long tones and extreme vibrato rubbed off on the horns too. “Actions # II” (#1) is scary Penderecki-style free jazz. Eddie the Rat, Drop Me Off In Denpasar [2004] Balinese gamelan-inspired polyrhythmic piano exrcises accompanied by percussion. Sounds great! This work hones in on the best qualities of Eddie the Rat. All too short, though (one piece, 17:41, split into five parts). Eddie the Rat, Insomnia Sound Bible Screwy free improvisors playing in the style of Bobby Conn, late Frank Zappa, John Lurie... The songs are a little too much like bad pop music. The free jams are pretty good. Bubbadinos-style folksy numbers. Motormark, Chrome Tape [Digital Hardcore, 2005] 20% digital, 0% hardcore. This is more of that no wave revival stuff, a little like Erase Errata (especially the vocals), Crack WAR or Devo. Too bad that trend was played out a year ago. Even if they had been on time, this stuff sucks. Suck all the life and originality out of those three aforementioned bands and you're halfway to these guys. DHR has always been so promising yet so disappointing. Stamen & Pistils, End of the Sweet Parade [Echelon, 2005] Singer songwriter stuff with weird fuzzed out and bleepy drum machine stuff. Worth a listen. Jackson United, Wastern Ballads [Magnificent, 2005] Pure shit. Is this what they're calling emo these days? From LA... maybe that gives you some idea. The Hurt Process, A Heartbeat Behind [Victory, 2005] Pretty generic metalcore/emocore. That means it's some overproduced chugging shit with cookie monster vocals until they get to the bridge, then it's the Promise Ring. The Deftones made both heavier and whinier. People still make music like this? It's far worse than shit from back in the day, too. Check out the early Cave In records instead for the closest thing to their sound that actually worked. They're major innovation is using Hair Metal guitar fills instead of chromatic Death Metal riffing. Yep. This is a giant turd. Make a Rising, Rip Through the Hawk Black Night [High Two, 2005] Like Smile-era Beach Boys informed by prog and post rock. Very diverse. Jumps from synth pop to indie verse to prog breakdown to darkish ambient. Pretty good. Marlon & Me, Fun Times [s/r, 2004] Cheesy swelling synth sounds, keyboard preset beats, goofy vocals, acoustic guitar. Almost stupid enough to be good. Worth checking out a few tracks. Maybe something will connect. Not likely though. Track 1 is an instrumental barnstormer. May 2005 Ilya Monosov, Architectures on Air and Other Works [Elevator Bath, 2005] Intimate sounds, very minimal and usually static. Monosov brings us in close to tiny sounds: a toothpick-strummed music box in “Composition A” (#2), vocalizations during harmonica-playing in “Architectures on Air” (#6) and a mic dragged down the sidewalk on “Performance 1” (#4). And there's a lack of horizontal progression: the vocalizations in “Architectures” are cut up and reorganization to resist linear flow, and even the stroll down the road in “Performance 1” doesn't seem to cross any different terrain in its course. At most, a few tracks get a little louder and denser near their conclusions. My favorites are “Autonomous Guitar Music” (#3), which consists of a shimmering sustained open guitar chord played by vibrating the body of the guitar with a motor (actually a fairly dynamic piece for its minimal nature), the minimal glitch blips of the untitled 5th track, and the creepy title track (#6) (a cut-up harmonica-playing music therapy session for stroke survivors). Colin Andrew Sheffield, First Thus [Elevator Bath, 2005] Airy, feedback delayed tones. Lots of subdued rushing wind sound, and more close-interval dissonance than is typical of ambient work (track one, at least). The press release says, “The recordings on this disc were entirely composed using other commercially available recordings,” but you wouldn't notice. Sheffield uses very brief, unrecognizable excerpts to get at some hidden essence (or new interpretation) of the source material. Track 2 squeezes a lot of action (relatively) into a comparatively short amount of time (4:24) and is no worse for the brevity. The other tracks are considerably longer, but no worse for the length. The 23+ minute “Disappear from View” (#3) is a favorite. Adam Pacione, Heat [Primary/Elevator Bath, 2005] Slow-developing, repetitive tones in the tradition of Biosphere, Eno and William Basinski. The first four tracks function as a single 15-minute track, one track for each chord. Each part sounds incomplete without the rest, though #4 could probably best stand on its own as it is the longest and has the most going on rhythmically as well as melodically. Track 5 is something of a coda (the track times are listed in terms of their location in the album's overall runtime, implying a single work). A more ghostly and airy take on the technique. Ooos and wind with lots of revere. The changes between tracks/movements are often a bit too abrupt and not quite enough happens within each section, but this sounds nice overall. Rec: 4, 5 April 2005 Autechre, Untilted [Warp, 2005] Very much in line with past releases. Angular beats, frequently very repetetive (track 1 doesn't significantly change until about 2:40). Augmented with weird DSP bass bubbles, blips, buzzes and ethereal ambient tones. They're trying to get to you with subtle rhytmic variations and exploratory digital timbres. I don't know why the tracks can't be more like 4 minutes long though. There doesn't seem to be quite enough going on in them to justify 7-16 minutes (most tracks are in that range). The unique samples and more fragmented rhythms of #3 (“Pro Radii”) make it stand out. #4 hits a little harder than the others. #5 has cool oscilaltion of the tempo toward the end. It's a short one, too. #8 also rocks and is quite long. No lyrics, hence no indeceny. Rec: 5, 3, 4, 2 Napalm Death, The Code is Red Long Live the Code [Century Media, 2005] Pioneers of grindcore, but their destructive impulses have been somewhat tempered by twenty-some years (and moved from the music to self-parody in the promo copy). I'm pretty sure its a 100% different line-up from the early years of the band. Shows signs of death metal and tonality. Jello Biafra does guest vocals on #7. No intelligible profanity. Rec: 2 February 2005 EDM, Endless Dismal Moan [BlackMetal.com/Cybertzara, 2005] One-man black metal project with a drum machine (joining a long tradition of such). From Japan, but true to the Nordic spirit. Consistently great. Dark ambient on #10 – almost sounds like something from Sunn o)))'s White 2 played on a crappy keyboard. The bonus tracks seem to be a little less developed and less necro. Uvall, Obsidian Torment [BlackMetal.com/Antinomian, 2005] New black metal going for an old school sound, complete with appropriately crappy production. The rigid guitars have an interesting relationship to the looser and slower drumming. Non-black elements work their way in in the form of Deftones/Rage Against the Machine-style funky chugging and drum breaks. Or as BlackMetal.com says, “cult Nordic-influenced darkness. Raw production (but not "primitive"), skillfully grim necro-ish attack, with strong sharp edges of old-school Heavy Metal brutality“. Ateleia, Swinngin Against the Moments [Antiopic, 2004] Glitchy shifting drones. Will transport you within yourself. SubtractiveLAD, Giving up the Ghost [n5MD, 2005] Atmospheric emotronica. Would fit in with Manual on Morr Music or Loscil on Kranky. Not as innovative as either of these groups, but nicely executed. Features some sick/fat synth lines. Dynamite Club, It's Deeper then Most People Think [2004] This sounds like Mr Bungle if every aspect of them were made much much worse. And I don't even like Mr Bungle very much. Far less skilled instumentalists playing a pastiche of far less interesting genres. It's mostly horrible rock music of a style that only gets played by amateur bands when they are trying to write a new song, and only for a short time until they realized they're playing the music that should not be. Add a 5-second “free jazz” breakdown and some guy yelling like a drunk frat boy (in every song) and you've got this band. I guess you need to see the kung fu in their live show to really appreciate them. December 2004 various, Niacin Sun [Bananafish, 2004] Half of this album consists of creepy excerpts from found tapes. The best is an intimate recording that sounds like it was homework for a marriage counseling session. Deep introspection and a heartfelt message to a somewhat estranged spouse (#2). Another oddity is a self-hypnosis recording aimed at making sex "a thousand times" better (#1). These recordings are complemented with experimental music. Jim Leftwich’a strange vocalizations, sounding like a bum grunting at himself, fit in well with the found tapes (#8). Monotract’s gritty synths, blowing winds and cutup drums provide a nice counterpoint. Some of the musical tracks seem out of place, like Mecca Normal’s singer/songwriter stuff (#11), but most of the album is pretty amazing. Axolotl, Axolotl [Psych-O-Path, 2004] Mellow psychedelic synth drones with free violin noodling. Lo fi hippy minimalism plus Mego glitch. #3 has the most structure and movement. #7 has more of a smooth, relaxing Kranky sound. Rec 3, 6, 5. Pumice, Raft [Last Visible Dog/Stabbies Etc, 2004] Desperate emotional music. The whole album sounds like you’re playing it through the cue speaker, which is always a good sound (tinny and distorted). Rec: #5 hope rock. #10 and #4 bleak Jandek style w/ terror vocals. #1 sad rock (Friends of Dean Martinez) w/ tape warble sounds in the guitars. Kali Z. Fasteau, Making Waves [Flying Note, 2004] Free jazz that stands out mostly for its unique inclusion of a weird sounding synth (played by Kali Z). This at times calls to mind Sun Ra, but the music is totally different from his. There’s also a lot of pitch bending of chords, which reminds me of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Kali Z plays other instruments on these recordings, but they tend to be nothing I haven’t heard before. Plus, her drumming isn’t really worth recording. August 2004 Venetian Snares, Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding [Planet Mu, 2004] Linear glitch beats over slow-moving, atmospheric and sometimes dark and goth-sounding synth lines. Some of these synth parts remind me of a less sophisticated Tangerine Dream, especially the beatless "Aaron" (#13). The beats are subdivided into ridiculously fast speeds while the main rhythm is generally an average tempo to match the synth. Lots of great rhythmic shifting keeps VSnares ahead of most makers of this sort of music. Unlike much of his previous work, this album contains few recognizable samples, though "Ion Divvy" (#7) has liberal use of Speak and Spell/Math and Pac Man samples. "Nineteen 1319" (#9) has an excellent slow and awkward drum solo. "Destroy Glass" (#10) has the most abstract rhythms on the album, but it doesn't really work as well as the other pieces. Rec: 9, 5, 3, 14 Nerve Net Noise, Meteor Circuit [Intransitive, 2002] Looped popping and buzzing sounds. Interesting rhythms generated by largely automated homemade analog synths. "Music that is between played and not-played, between controlled and uncontrolled." Each tracks gets denser until the last track is just one sustained sound. Probably incredibly annoying to lots of people, but I love it. Rec: 5, 4 Minit, Now Right Here [Staubgold, 2004] Long drone pieces. #1 is the longest (19:30) and is in a major key. Moving bassline kicks in at 9:30. The other 3 are moodier and dirtier. Rec: 4, 2 Christian Marclay, djTRIO [Asphodel, 2004] Various DJ trios featuring Marclay, Ikue Mori,1 and 0. Very abstract free improv like whacked out musique concrete. Rec: 1 May 2004 Miba, The Corplate Porblem Samples chopped, processed and stuttered to the point of being more like tones. Track one is fucking great - very melodic. 2 and 3 are more background music. 4 has more of a beat than the others, which isn't really an improvement. 5, 6 and 7 are also more abstract. 8 has a beat like 4, but is subtler. Rec: 1*, 8 Tender Morsels, Please Accept this Humble Token of my Gratitude Quiet granulated noise with lots of repetition and almost droning. Resembles a more restrained Wolf Eyes, especially the more rhythmic track 4. The first piece is the quietest and subtlest, but it's also the tensest piece. Rec: 4, 1 Milford Graves and John Zorn, 502 Pretty good free jazz, but nothing too new or exciting. Typical Zorn playing. 1 is good. 2 is not. 3 has weird vocals (also 7, etc.). 5 is different and intersting. 6 is talk. 7 ends with a 4 minute Zorn solo. Rec: 1, 5 Din-ST, Yamu d'-Din 1 is an intro. Fuckin 303s (#2)! Clicky hip hop w/ raver sounds. Chomp sample in #3. Some trainwreck style beats. #8 is good - weird slow hop. #10 is good. Vocals are a little off/annoying, but it's still probably the best track. #11 - lots of silence at end. Indecent: 9, 11 |