Armagedda -- I AM ep [Eisenwald / Nordvis]
The Swedish black metal band Armagedda has apparently called it quits, but they coughed up one last EP of material before vanishing into the abyss, and their final four songs are black indeed. The barbed-wire guitar sound, simple but pounding drums, and raw-throated vocals often remind me of Akitsa, but they're not (quite) as monochromatic as that band. They're also much angrier, and when they pick up speed or the drummer becomes even more aggressive, totally punishing. There's nothing subtle or sophisticated about the band's sound, which is totally old-school necro style, and a deeply hateful necro at that. The first track, "Den Skrivna Eskatologin," is the most uptempo of the bunch, kicking off the album with a blazing fury; things slow down a bit (but remain every bit as angry) with "De Vanhelgade," a track whose tempo and simple, martial beat initially make it sound like an Akitsa song, until the drumming grows more complex and furious and the guitar riffs somewhat more convoluted -- not by much, just enough to make them peculiar and assymetrical. The mid-tempo title track is the closest they ever come to being catchy, while its two-chord guitar fizz and plodding drums keep it firmly in necro territory. They finish with another galloping song, "Cold Eon," that leans toward being a tad too generic for its own good (at least until it slows down about a third of the way through), but makes up for that flaw with its furious enthusiasm. Raw, necro and filthy -- this is not a bad way to bow out.
Armagedda
Eisenwald
Nordvis
Aspectee -- MORBEN [First Fallen Star]
The debut album by Germany's Aspectee (a side project of Evoke Scurvee's Michael Frenkel) is essentially nine tracks of some of the most forbidding dark-ambient drone ever laid down. The opening track "stuhlmann" sounds like the musicial embodiment of fading light from a dying sun, appropriately setting the tone for an album that's more about dark sheets of cosmic sound than anything resembling what most would consider actual music. The album has a dark soundtrack vibe that's not accidental -- the band's Myspace page lists mainly films like BLADE RUNNER, TWIN PEAKS, and THE MACHINIST as influences -- and it's not hard to imagine any of this being co-opted for use in brooding art films about destroyed landscapes and dissolute lives. The late J. G. Ballard would have approved of this, I'm sure. There are some gritty harsh noise textures in "newin" along with the swirling keyboard drones, and elements of noise creep into the vast droning plains of "aspectee," while the tinny, high-pitched drone cycling through "betho et" resembles a cold wind blowing through an empty cemetery. Really, though, the main motif running through this album is a persistent vision of cold, dark emptiness, and an unnerving sense of cosmic dread that's positively Lovecraftian. Bleak and beautiful, but probably not for the suicidal. Limited to 500 copies.
Aspectee
First Fallen Star
Dense Vision Shrine -- TIME LOST IN OBLIVION [First Fallen Star]
This release, from a project helmed by Karsten Hamre, is a simultaneous release with another album under his own name (reviewed later in this post), and welds gothic conventions to a dark ambient core. Grandiose, frozen keyboard washes are accompanied by noises that sound very much like the processed sound of animals yelping and insects buzzing. Some tracks, like "Chapter III - Through Fjords and Burning Skies," have titles suggesting a black metal aesthetic but music that's surprisingly subdued in nature and owes far more to classical conventions than anything remotely resembling metal. Things are not always so abstract: in "Chapter VI - Through Eternity," muted percussion provides a rudimentary beat as swirling bursts of noise rise in periodically violent fashion, cutting through the cold keyboard drone; eventually the percussion mutates into something less static and more primitive. Strange electronic frippery shows up again (along with more simple percussion) in "Chapter VII - The Guardians of Staglieno" and "Chapter X - The Girl Next Door," but otherwise the tracks are largely rooted in symphonic keyboard swells and endless expanses of glacial drone. As with Hamre's other release, the sound is often beautiful and simultaneously disquieting, and the two releases share a similar packaging format, housed in a dvd case and limited to a thousand copies, with the first five hundred also containing a dvd of visual imagery for use in live shows.
Dense Vision Shrine
First Fallen Star
Dusted Angel -- EARTH SICK MIND [Mankind Records]
The debut album by this California band is difficult to easily pigeonhole (always a good sign), but it's definitely a throwback to 70s doom, in both sound and style. It's not persistently slow, wasting doom by any means -- there's a lot of variety to the tempos and parts, and especially to the ever-evolving guitar riffs -- but the guitar / vocal sound unquestionably owes a lot to classic Black Sabbath and St. Vitus. This also hearkens back to a time when bands spent a lot of time jamming out the kinks in songs until they had a collection of distinct, memorable songs with original, intelligent riffs and structures. For a band being marketed as doom, the structures of these songs are actually fairly convoluted, and while the rock-action riffs are definitely heavy, they're also complex and unusual. There are also a lot of them: whereas most of the bands one might cite as an obvious influence on these guys were fond of building songs out of two or three key riffs, Dusted Angel employs many, many riffs within any given song, and even when they return to earlier ones, they don't do it in a formulaic format. Their songs twist and turn in all sorts of unexpected directions as a result. The five members of this band include former players in Bl'ast, Spaceboy, and Gargantula, and they all turn in consistently swank performances. This band deserves the kind of hype that Howl has been getting lately for an album that's nowhere near this good. If you're old-school, you should definitely seek this out.
Dusted Angel
Mankind Records
Encoffination -- RITUAL ASCENSION BEYOND FLESH [Selfmadegod]
Hey, this is some creepy-sounding stuff that does a fine job of straddling the line between old-school death metal and doom. The groaning, foot-dragging product of the duo Ghoat (vocals, guitar, bass) and Elektrokutioner (drums) fuses death metal's early guitar sound to the stunted tempos and generally suicidal sound of dISEMBOWELMENT with exceptionally unnerving results. The ritual-sounding opener "Procession" paves the way for "Nefarious Yet Elegant Are the Bowels of Hell" (my vote for the niftiest song title I've heard in ages), which is essentially a lot of washed-out death metal guitar fuzz over absurdly slow drumming, with a sound like a slow-moving tsunami rattling the walls of a submarine. The zombie-like guitar sound is impressive; that it tends to drown out the drumming might be a minor drawback for some, but the muffled, strangulated sound that creates is absolutely fine with me. This is ugly stuff, scary in the way a Hammer horror film soundtrack is scary, like a poisonous gas cloud disguised as music. I dare you to listen to this late at night with the lights off. This album is already available as a cassette by Ritval Death Offerings and on vinyl thorugh Psychedelic Lotus Order; it's only fitting that such a bizarre and exquisitely retro album should take its time about making it to the digital format. All must hail the masterful use of slow motion and excessive reverb in the name of all that is unholy and occult.
Encoffination
Selfmadegod
Karsten Hamre -- THROUGH THE EYES OF A STRANGER [First Fallen Star]
Formerly aligned with such projects as Arcane Art and Penitent, Hamre's first release under his own name is a series of seven dark-ambient passages in the vein of Lustmord, dark and drifting, often symphonic in nature. The Lustmord comparison is apt, for Hamre favors minimalist and subterranean soundscapes composed of distant keyboard drones, sheets of processed sound steeped in reverb that ebb and flow in sudden movements like giant waves crashing on a beach, and the use of incidental sounds that may be field recordings. The works on this disc frequently resemble sounds of the country that have been processed and repurposed to serve a naturalistic aesthetic; this basic feel is sometimes adorned with processed sounds of a mysterious nature that could be anything from modified electronics to mutated sounds of animal noises. On "Chapter V - Through Past Times," there is a percussion element as well, a simple but persistent pounding in the background like a loop of someone pounding nails in a coffin -- a sound that provides a certain rhythm as a counterpoint to the howling drone and periodic chatter of muted electronics. The main aspect of the album, however, is its minimalist use of mysterious sounds, an enigmatic approach that yields subdued yet unsettling results. Packaged in a dvd case and limited to a thousand copies; the first five hundred come with a dvd featuring visuals used for live performances.
Karsten Hamre
First Fallen Star
Ron House -- BLIND BOY IN THE BACK SEAT [Columbus Discount Records]
Maaaaan, I've got to start reviewing CDS releases as soon as they arrive, because it's happened again -- this album has already sold out. * WUPS * Nevertheless, they sent me this swell, swell copy and thus I'm gonna review it... you'll just have to look for your copy on Ebay until the label gets around to reissuing it, when and if that happens.
Anyway, Ron House is a guy flung from the same musical orbit as Mike Rep, Tommy Jay, Dan Howland, and other important Columbus punk luminaries. Originally a member of such bands as the Twisted Shouts, Moses Carryout, and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, he's apparently been a significant musical force and visionary of the Columbus scene since the late 70s. This LP collects a cherry-picked handful of important tunes by Twisted Shouts, Moses Carryout, one track with Tommy Jay and Mike Rep, and several with Kim Workman and Mike Rep. The tunes in question exhibit a peculiar punk-folk vibe not unlike the sound of the recently unearthed set of tunes by Tommy Jay and Mike Rep, driven largely by House's treble-heavy guitar action and nasal vocals. Like a lot of archival material on CDS, the vibe here is distinctly lo-fi; I don't see any info on the recordings, but I'm guessing at least some of this is of the homebrew, four-track variety. That raw, immediate sound just adds to the charm of these ragged but earnest songs, which combine nods to the avant garde with a punked-out pop-folk sensibility that's transformed into something edgier by the insistent, treble-happy guitar attack (a sound that's inspired as much by surf music as by Joy Division or the Dead Kennedys). This is the real essence of early punk -- an original style rooted as much in pop as anything else and indifferent to the slavery of fashion. For devotees of the Columbus scene, this is a pretty important artifact; even for those previously unaware of said scene, it's still definitely worth seeking out.
Ron House
Columbus Discount Records
Innfallen -- THREE DAYS OF DARKNESS [First Fallen Star]
This is interesting: while this album is a dark-ambient epic with industrial overtones that sounds like it could have come from the Tesco-Disco orbit, it's the product of an American band (from Illinois, of all places). The sound reminds me of a more droning and subdued version of MZ.412 -- heavy on the evil and atmospherics, but minus that band's more metallic leanings. A concept album based on the Catholic prophecy involving three days of darkness following God's decision to unleash evil spirits and demons to walk the earth as a response to man's unending wickedness, the eight tracks here form a series of movements chronicling the reign of terror of those three days (no mean feat, given that the album is entirely instrumental). The album's sound is forbidding but not overwrought, often combining droning keyboards with sweeping waves of heavily reverbed sound and processed electronic noise; this is dark ambient from an industrial perspective, with a resulting sound that's every bit as creepy as you might imagine. Some of the tracks like "Day Two (Gnashing of Teeth)" sound like throwbacks to the isolationist movement, featuring amorphous elements like wind noises, fading drones, clattering sounds, and other disparate elements that cohere into a whole that radiates despair and pessimism. Despite the album's dark and melancholy overtones, the songs themselves are relatively subdued -- there are no overt fireworks here, just a creeping glacial drone that occasionally includes industrial elements. The packaging is as austere as the album's sound: the disc comes enclosed in a stiff cardboard booklet adorned with sepia-toned art of a gothic nature that includes a cover painting of Death on a pale horse wielding a sycthe. Impressive stuff, and limited to a thousand copies.
Innfallen
First Fallen Star
Robert Poss -- SETTINGS: MUSIC FOR DANCE, FILM, FASHION AND INDUSTRY [Trace Elements]
The former Band of Susans leader Steve Albini once called "an enormously underrated guitar theorist" is back with his first full-length release in eight years, a compilation of fourteen tracks mainly commissioned for the arts (hence the title), and it's very much a continuation of the sound he began exploring on DISTORTION IS TRUTH and CROSSING CASCO BAY. (In case you're wondering what took so long between albums, he's been busy doing location sound for the likes of ABC, the BBC, Discovery Channel, and the Learning Channel; he's currently running the sound board for Suicide -- yes, that Suicide -- on their latest European tour.) If you've heard either of the two previous records, then you know that the heavily electronic and processed sound realm in which he now works bears little resemblance to the distortion-laden sheets of sound he used to lay down when the Band of Susans brought the rock... and yet that band's ghost puts in a spectral appearance from time to time here. "With Music No. 2 (excerpt)," for instance, is built around a looped version of the main riff that anchored "Sometimes," only here it's surrounded by wailing drones and ambient sound. Then there's "Tourniquet Revisited," an orchestral reinterpretation of sorts of the original LOVE AGENDA song "Tourniquet," in which the song is reduced to its drone elements and augmented with strings to interesting effect.
The rest of the album is mainly informed by electronics -- the amazing cover picture, featuring a vast array of pedals, sound processing modules, and cables everywhere says volumes about where those mysterious sounds on the disc are coming from -- in service of repetition, wave-like sound, and (of course) the almighty drone. One of the best tracks is "Inverness," nine-plus minutes of steadily building rhythmic drone and hoverbot sounds that could have been lifted from a science fiction film soundtrack; about halfway through, simple but effective bursts of percussion add a new element as the sci-fi sounds grow increasingly agitated. "Concordance" is a surprise -- a waltz built around a repeated, tinkling guitar arpeggio buoyed by a gentle rhythmic pulse; it's easily the most accessible thing on the album. Distortion and feedback show up on tracks like "The Pleasure of Stillness (live excerpt)," "Trio (excerpt)," "Other Stories Interlude," and "Feed Forward," often in the form of piercing wails that weave in and out of the electronic sounds or burst forth in great droning waves, but it's on "Stare Decisis" where the feedback really takes on a life of its own, wailing and droning in the background behind a series of pinging electronic loops for over eight minutes. Toward the end, the droning sound is joined by minimal but upbeat percussion, a development that's most pleasing. "Border Piano Walk" is another intriguing slice of the unexpected, built around brief and repetitive bursts of treated piano. This is all good stuff -- Robert's adventures in the avant-garde remain consistently interesting throughout the album, which is yet another testament to his continuing desire to expand the boundaries of sound. Let's just hope we don't have to wait another eight years for the next one, huh?
Robert Poss
Trace Elements
Gil San Marcos -- DOMES lp [Bombay Cove]
First off, I love the way the vinyl looks: camouflage splatter green. It's heavy vinyl, too, playable at 45 rpm for that maximum fidelty sound, if you can dig it. Then there's the sound, which mixes elements of noise, reverb, and hypnosis in pretty much equal measures, as befits something recorded with a wide array of noise-making gadgets and efx pedals. The back cover of the sleeve helpfully details all the particular gadgets employed in creating each of the six tracks, just in case you want to acquire a bunch of arcane gear and recreate the noise thrills yourself. Each side contains two studio tracks and a live one. Reverb and delay are applied to a percussion-like noise on "smoke film," then to even more violent sounds, as electronic tweeting is added to the mix; the sound alternates between reverberating bursts of sonic action and blasts of noise. The title track is more drone-o-rific, although that drone comes in the form of squealing noise washed out by reverb, a sound that grows steadily louder and more chaotic as the piece progresses, only to devolve into a hum-heavy drone that eventually fades out. The first side's live track, "triple crown parquet," recorded in New Orleans, is the minimalist sound of something processed through a delay unit being struck followed by repeated iterations of the same sound; different sounds emerge in this pattern, eventually forming in clusters, then returning to individual sounds, to disorienting effect. On the flip side, "every clock and wristwatch" opens with pealing feedback before descending into the glorious spectacle of uncontrolled noise chaos that can only come from massive efx pedal abuse (along with the use of tape feedback and a modulator). There's more feedback, along with plenty of rumbling low-end sonic distress, in "sterling chambers," and "mass grave," another live recording (this time in Nashville), ends the album on an appropriately grotesque note, with drones playing out in the background while the clanging noise up front approximates the sound of a garbage disposal grinding shards of glass metal. This is swell stuff, with plenty of enticing, noise-laden textures and a high level of variety from one track to the next.
Gil San Marcos
Bombay Cove
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
... because it's all about the drone, right?
Acoustic Ambience by Ela -- LONG PERIOD EVENTS [Lelavision]
Now this is interesting... seven tracks of shimmering, drone-heavy soundscapes from sculptor and composer Ela Lamblin, created with an unusual invention of his own making: a five-foot conical stringed instrument played from the inside out. Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring a tabla solo by Vishal on "Epicenter," the sound of his enigmatic device is one of acoustic ambience, with resonating string drones created by bowing and string percussion. It's a beautiful and otherworldly sound, often resembling that of a more harmonically rich theremin or a radically detuned piano; I don't know how many sets of strings are in the instrument, but the resulting sound is certainly orchestral in nature, with different-sounding drones winding around each other, fading and decaying in waves. Most of the material on this disc is free-form, unencumbered by percussion; tabla rhythms show up occasionally, however, as on "Pyroclastic Flows," in which a lilting rhythm creates a hypnotic pulse over which strings float and drone, and on "Epicenter," in which the tabla rhythm is a bit more insistent and the drones more melancholy and piercing. There are also some tracks like "Wavefields" in which some of the strings are rhythmic in nature; in that one, one set of strings creates a pulse over which other strings produce droning lines that swell and fade. While the use of such unconventional instruments makes the album experimental in nature, the sound is certainly far more accessible than one might expect. Droneheads should find this of great interest.
Ela Lamblin
Lelavision
Author & Punisher -- DRONE MACHINES [Heart and Crossbone]
What is it about Israel that breeds such great and unconventional bands steeped in heaviness? You could speculate all day on the subject, but the fact is that any region capable of spawning bands as heavy and weird as Rabies Caste, Barbara, and Tangorodrim is a place that warrants a lot more attention from the average metalhead. (For a handy primer on Israeli metal, check out the excellent site Metal Israel.) Which brings us to Author & Punisher, the one-man assault unit of Tristan Shone, who literally uses heavy machinery -- much of it hand-built -- and electronic instruments to create soul-crushing rhythms and blackened drones, intensely oppressive, claustrophobic music that uses unusual modern technology to bridge the gap between industrial music and doom metal. This picks up where early Swans and Godflesh left off -- Shone screams scary but intelligent lyrics over an endless parade of drill-press beats and inhuman bass drone. This is seriously some of the heaviest stuff I've ever heard, on par with the pre-Jarboe Swans albums (although it's nowhere near as monochromatic as those classic slabs of painfully stunted tempos and testosterone). What makes this really stand out is the masterful use of drone along with the punishing beats -- Shone's aesthetic is obviously rooted in drone as much as industrial metal -- and his ability to craft actual songs out of the groaning, moaning machine damage. Flourishes such as the military cadence of the vocals in "Beginning of End" (which eventually devolve into a looped phrase that melds with the machine sound until it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins), the ringing harmonic tones in "Lust For Scales," and the abrupt shift in dynamics in "Blue Flame" work well at keeping the songs vital and interesting. As for the drones themselves, they range from clean tones to lush harmonic squealing and edgy sawtooth wavetones, creating a variety of sounds to accompany the lumbering rhythms. The more arty moments, though, never come at the expense of the album's bottom-line blueprint of total heaviness aimed at turning your skull concave. Heavy, heavy, heavy -- are you tough enough to deal with it?
Author & Punisher
Heart and Crossbone
Charnel House -- THE LEPROSY OF UNREALITY [Sygil]
Bloomington, IA may not leap to mind as a spawning ground for black metal, but you'd never know this duo hail from there -- this, the band's third album, sounds like a lost artifact from the first wave of Scandanavian black metal. This is the classic sound of dark, freezing, lo-fi misanthropy, with blurry pounding drums hammering away in the distance over the sound of a serrated guitar bathed in reverb; it's the sound of fog rolling across a battlefield at twilight, all grim and dark and utterly necro. There are some deviations from the purely necro aesthetic, though -- the eerie intro "Law of Opposites" features grandiose guitar chords and disembodied moaning vocals over a shuffling beat, and the arresting vocal aesthetic is a motif that reappears throughout the album. The other big departure from the war-metal aggression is On "Passage (Out From Illusion)," where droning, dark-ambient guitar swirls around eerie noises, disturbing wordless vocalizing, and unhinged metallic percussion that owes a lot to Abruptum. The rest of the material is closer to the speed-obsessed destruction of early Marduk and the claustrophic sonic hate of Striborg, a combination that makes for a winning vibe of misanthropic evil that will also really annoy your neighbors. This is a band so kvlt they don't even have a website, you'll have to hit the mail link below to get your hands on a copy.
Charnel House
Custodian -- TOIL AND WASTE [Syzmic Records]
Talk about consistency, Custodian has it: this is the third or fourth Custodian release I've heard (the seventh overall) and is every bit as harsh and filled with paint-stripping sonic virulence as the earlier ones were. This time Custodian presents nine tracks of gruesome sonic death in just under thirty minutes, with clanging, screeching soundscapes built on thick layers of power-electronics, grinding industrial loops, and intense walls of harsh noise. It's difficult, if not impossible, to really do anything "new" in the harsh noise genre without turning into something else altogether, but Custodian neatly sidesteps this problem simply by turning the aggression factor up to eleven -- there are no weak attempts at "art" here, no digressions into other styles, just 29 minutes of unrelenting brutality. The tracks are separated by the briefest of pauses, giving the listener almost no downtime from a steady assault of incredibly loud audio violence that begins immediately and without fanfare. This is old-school noise made with the simplest of motivations, designed to obliterate your senses and possibly damage your hearing in the process. Nice? Not even remotely. Intense and punishing? Just the way it should be. Harsheads, take note (and pick up the band's back catalog while you're at it).
Custodian
Syzmic Records
Eddie the Rat -- OUT BEHIND THE 8-BALL [Edgetone Records]
Multi-instrumentalist and full-on eccentric Paul Martin returns with a seventh outing as Eddie the Rat, playing piano with his hands and drums with his feet while the three other members of the quartet hang five in a zone somewhere between the avant garde and unabashed pop stylings. The secret weapon this time around is vocalist Molly Tascone, whose ethereal voice makes a nice counterpoint to the musical chaos. (She also plays xylophone, woodwinds, and various tools of a percussive nature.) The quartet is rounded out by Ronnie Camaro on bass and Dan Ake on percussion and "power tools" (it's an avant thing, you wouldn't understand). So here's the deal: Martin's songs mix classical and pop tones with extended, repetitive song structures rooted more in experimental minimalism and incorporate bursts of bone-rattling percussion (especially on the engaging opener, "My Little Red Stungun"). The album's twelve tracks (four of which comprise the 18-minute ending suite "March of the Haydevil") strike an engaging and surprisingly accessible balance between avant-garde weirdness and highly listenable, sometimes even catchy, pop music. The preponderance of piano -- an instrument that has inexplicably disappeared from much of modern music in the past decade -- is a welcome move as well.
Eddie the Rat
Edgetone Records
The Holly Martins -- NO. NO. YES. NO. [Edgetone Records]
This Bay area trio has an unusual configuration -- alto sax, guitar, and voice -- that immediately sets them apart from the average band. Firmly rooted in the avant garde jazz tradition, they nevertheless sound highly unique thanks to their lack of percussion and the spare but melodious sound of sax and guitar acting in concert. Things are made even more complex and "out there" by vocalist Lorin Benedict's unorthodox approach, featuring unusual cadences, unexpected turns of phrasing, and an expressionist style akin to beat poetry. Without the presence of percussion, the guitar and sax take turns providing the rhythm and melody, sometimes by combining the two concepts to create rhythmic melodies (or is that melodic rhythms?) that create the musical backdrop for Benedict's hyperkinetic vocalizations, making the need for percussion unnecessary. The inspired combination of musical elements here results in a sound that's not only fresh and original, but far more accessible than the concept might suggest on paper. It doesn't hurt that Eric Vogler gets a genuinely beautiful guitar sound that is nicely complemented by the lush and extravagant sound of Kasey Knudsen's saxophone. The surprising part is how little you'll miss the percussion.
The Holly Martins
Edgetone Records
Inhalant -- SAVE OUR SOULS [Syzmic Records]
Noise! It's everywhere! Even in Vernon, TX, a small town pretty much unknown to anyone outside of the state -- but since it's in Tornado Alley and dominated by industrial food processing plants, it's a perfect breeding ground for angst and machine noise. The six tracks here are, in fact, heavily indebted to machine sounds, which often form the backbone over which C. A. Odom slathers generous amounts of hissing white noise and the occasional muffled conversation sample. Odom's approach reminds me at times of The Grey Wolves minus the political content, or Whitehouse minus the hyped-up controversy; there's less emphasis on sheer skull-frying violence and more on the power of repetition welded to a colorful spectrum of white, brown, and pink noise. The throbbing noise attack is especially enthralling on "Body Trap," where the varieties of noise color ebb and flow in overlapping waves over a seething bass-heavy machine rhythm akin to a damaged car running on stripped gears. The intensity factor does increase as the disc goes on, though -- while the tracks continue to be mainly noise over machine rhythms, by the final track, "Save Our Souls," the white noise is thick and corrosive, nearly drowning out the rumbling machinery at work in the background. Now that Whitehouse has gone digital, this makes an excellent substitute for scouring your ears, and your girlfriend won't be as uptight about the content, either.
Inhalant
Syzmic Records
Thollem McDonas and Arrington de Dionyso -- INTUITION SCIENCE AND SEX [Edgetone Records]
What do you get when you put one guy with a beat-up piano and a guy with a bass clarinet together in a recording studio? If the guys in question are McDonas and de Dionyso, you get four boss tracks of synapse-frying drone, that's what. McDonas plinks and plonks at the damaged piano while his clarinet-spanking pal drones and bleats, and the combination sounds absolutely amazing. The minimal instrumentation means the sound resonates freely in the studio space, unencumbered by other sounds -- this is definitely a spacious-sounding album -- and thanks to a remarkably resonant piano, they can (and do) take turns at droning, offering each one the opportunity to solo. Both players get great sounds from their respective instruments, and despite being theoretically limited by the simple choice of instruments, they manage to pull off an incredible variety of sounds, moods, and playing strategies. It's always nice to see players from the avant tribe getting their drone on.
Thollem McDonas
Arrington de Dionyso
Edgetone Records
Murder By Static -- EXSITS [Deadsix Communications]
The ever-prolific Chris Stepniewski returns with another disc that combines elements of techno, breakbeat, noise, and ambient music to create thirteen brief bursts of electronic fury. Drill-press beats are joined by bursts of static, ambient keyboard washes, and other forms of electronic effluvia in a series of shifting configurations. Despite the constantly changing layers of sound and noise, the basic aesthetic is rooted in an agitated and often noisy form of drum 'n bass built on galloping techno rhythms -- this is caffienated music, to be sure. There are moments of ambient grace to give the listener some breathing room, but those moments are fleeting; most of the time the action is intense and built on heavy jackhammer rhythms. Whether these sound snippets actually constitute songs or not is debatable, but there's no question the intent is to set your body in motion, and regardless of the song structures, it definitely qualifies as aggressive body rock.
Murder By Static
Deadsix Communications
Murder By Static -- LUXICON PHASE [Deadsix Communications]
This disc -- released before the previously reviewed one, if you're keeping track of such things -- is similar to that one (and the rest of the one-man band's canon). The eleven tracks are various combinations of frantic techno beats, strange noises, ambient washes of sound, and electronic debasement. The tracks use these regular elements as snippets of recombinant DNA, adding and subtracting layers of electronica and noise over hard and high-tempo beats; the result is a series of mini-soundtracks steeped in sonic violence. Like previous releases, the songs on here are less actual songs than beat-heavy electronic confections, but they're designed to stimulate physical motion on the dance floor, and in that respect they're highly successful. There's no shortage of punishing beats to accompany the constant stream of sonic frippery; for devolved electronica, this is pretty intense stuff.
Murder By Static
Deadsix Communications
Seeded Plain -- LAND TRACTS [Featherspines]
Public Eyesore mastermind Bryan Day sure is in a lot of bands; this one, with Jay Kreimer, is the latest. Both are credited with "objects, time" -- a nifty way of saying they like banging on things in cryptic waves of rhythm (or maybe anti-rhythm, if you're one of those people who insist on having your beats evenly spaced and all that boring stuff). Here they spend six tracks (with titles like "arise-d" and "namstre-d" -- don't ask me what it all means, I'm out of the loop here, dig?) banging and clanging on a variety of mysterious objects with a fever that's not quite completely random but certainly not persistently consistent enough to approach commercial music. There's some intriguing honking and bleating on "arise-d" that might be samples, found sound, or audience participation, occasionally leavened with feedback and springy noises and shouting. Fizzy noisemaking rears its head among the chaotic improvisation on "done-d" along with an actual rhythm manifested through some obscure item drafted into service as a percussion item. The other tracks proceed in similar fashion -- which is to say, lots of screeching and scrunching and thumping and bumping -- as the duo display great enthusiasm for demonstrating the sound of unpredictability. Like all live improv, it sounds pretty enigmatic divorced from the visuals, but the random factor keeps it entertaining.
Seeded Plain
Featherspines
Uke of Spaces Corners -- FLOWERS IN THE NIGHT [Corleone Records]
Dan Beckman and Amy Moon O.S. are proponents of lo-fi noise folk (or something like that); the songs on their third album are sparse and hypnotic, driven by simple arrangements built as much around incidental noise as truncated folk guitar. Muted percussion and spiky piano make the occasional appearance, but mainly their sound is that of a folk duo performing in a space invaded by jagged shards of ambient sound. It's a strange but bizarrely compelling aesthetic, all in service of deceptively simple (but not simplistic) songs about dogs, tea, arugula, and other equally esoteric subjects. This is the sound of the Velvet Underground gone acoustic and harmonizing on obscure folk ditties, lo-fi and transcendent, enigmatic without being welded to unnerving academic concerns. These are the songs you expect homeless avant musicians to play on cheap acoustic guitars to pass the time on a cold winter's eve, singing together while huddled around the fire burning in a cast-off oil drum. Evocative and mysterious, it's the place where traditional folk songs meet the new lo-fi ethos. Strange, yes, but oddly comforting in its own demented way.
Uke of Spaces Corners
Corleone Records
Yehudit -- IN THE ZONE [Edgetone Records]
Violinist Yehudit brings the swinging sounds of what I think of as cocktail jazz -- smooth and serene, but occasionally fizzy like a good martini -- on this disc. Accompanied by a chamber jazz ensemble employing drums, vibraphone, bass, guitar, sax, and clarinet, the band percolates with rhythmic style as Yehudit waxes melodic on both electric and acoustic violin. The instrumentation makes this a strong fusion of the classical and jazz worlds, and the talent of the ensemble is significant enogh that the driving, complex rhythms are executed with unerring precision -- and yet the sound is loose and nimble, focused without being uptight. Yehudit's quixotic melodies build off the rhythmic foundations in seamless fashion, adding yet another dimension to the layers of sound. The band cooks in energetic fashion without becoming strident, and on "Mango Nights" and "The Hidden Place," even manages to be languid and introspective. The band's busy but enthusiastically engaging sound benefits from a tendency toward polyrhythmic intensity and strong, innovative melodies, resulting in seven strong tracks that don't require a degreen in jazz or avant philosophy to enjoy.
Yehudit
Edgetone Records
Robert Ziino -- AN UNUSUAL DAY IN MONTANA [Experimental Artists]
Each of the twelve tracks on this disc is exactly five minutes long, and each of those five minute pieces is an electronic soundscape incorporating bleeps and bloops, strange noises, and chopped-up keyboard samples. If you've heard Ziino's previous work, then this will come as no surprise -- this is similar in style and execution to his earlier albums -- and the only real difference is a changing palette of sounds and a more pronounced affinity for songs anchored in rhythm. Beats abound, albeit mostly in simple fashion, forming a framework over which devolved sonic bleating, tweaked and processed, wavers back and forth like electrically charged drunks in the machine. The arbitrary five-minute limitation to the tracks is offset by the tendency within each track for one set of sounds to fade away and mutate into others; this makes it difficult to tell where tracks begin and end without consulting the cd player clock, but it also makes the tracks more unpredictable. As always, Ziino comes up with a swell-sounding bank of sounds, most of it pure electronic tones, some of it bordering on white noise; the use of highly repetitive and infectious rhythms provides a steady baseline sound over which he solos freely with processed sounds. Strange and colorful, the tracks bear little resemblance to traditional songs, but the sheer variety of sounds and cold, cold beats will do much to warm the cockles of the electronerd's heart.
Experimental Artists
Now this is interesting... seven tracks of shimmering, drone-heavy soundscapes from sculptor and composer Ela Lamblin, created with an unusual invention of his own making: a five-foot conical stringed instrument played from the inside out. Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring a tabla solo by Vishal on "Epicenter," the sound of his enigmatic device is one of acoustic ambience, with resonating string drones created by bowing and string percussion. It's a beautiful and otherworldly sound, often resembling that of a more harmonically rich theremin or a radically detuned piano; I don't know how many sets of strings are in the instrument, but the resulting sound is certainly orchestral in nature, with different-sounding drones winding around each other, fading and decaying in waves. Most of the material on this disc is free-form, unencumbered by percussion; tabla rhythms show up occasionally, however, as on "Pyroclastic Flows," in which a lilting rhythm creates a hypnotic pulse over which strings float and drone, and on "Epicenter," in which the tabla rhythm is a bit more insistent and the drones more melancholy and piercing. There are also some tracks like "Wavefields" in which some of the strings are rhythmic in nature; in that one, one set of strings creates a pulse over which other strings produce droning lines that swell and fade. While the use of such unconventional instruments makes the album experimental in nature, the sound is certainly far more accessible than one might expect. Droneheads should find this of great interest.
Ela Lamblin
Lelavision
Author & Punisher -- DRONE MACHINES [Heart and Crossbone]
What is it about Israel that breeds such great and unconventional bands steeped in heaviness? You could speculate all day on the subject, but the fact is that any region capable of spawning bands as heavy and weird as Rabies Caste, Barbara, and Tangorodrim is a place that warrants a lot more attention from the average metalhead. (For a handy primer on Israeli metal, check out the excellent site Metal Israel.) Which brings us to Author & Punisher, the one-man assault unit of Tristan Shone, who literally uses heavy machinery -- much of it hand-built -- and electronic instruments to create soul-crushing rhythms and blackened drones, intensely oppressive, claustrophobic music that uses unusual modern technology to bridge the gap between industrial music and doom metal. This picks up where early Swans and Godflesh left off -- Shone screams scary but intelligent lyrics over an endless parade of drill-press beats and inhuman bass drone. This is seriously some of the heaviest stuff I've ever heard, on par with the pre-Jarboe Swans albums (although it's nowhere near as monochromatic as those classic slabs of painfully stunted tempos and testosterone). What makes this really stand out is the masterful use of drone along with the punishing beats -- Shone's aesthetic is obviously rooted in drone as much as industrial metal -- and his ability to craft actual songs out of the groaning, moaning machine damage. Flourishes such as the military cadence of the vocals in "Beginning of End" (which eventually devolve into a looped phrase that melds with the machine sound until it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins), the ringing harmonic tones in "Lust For Scales," and the abrupt shift in dynamics in "Blue Flame" work well at keeping the songs vital and interesting. As for the drones themselves, they range from clean tones to lush harmonic squealing and edgy sawtooth wavetones, creating a variety of sounds to accompany the lumbering rhythms. The more arty moments, though, never come at the expense of the album's bottom-line blueprint of total heaviness aimed at turning your skull concave. Heavy, heavy, heavy -- are you tough enough to deal with it?
Author & Punisher
Heart and Crossbone
Charnel House -- THE LEPROSY OF UNREALITY [Sygil]
Bloomington, IA may not leap to mind as a spawning ground for black metal, but you'd never know this duo hail from there -- this, the band's third album, sounds like a lost artifact from the first wave of Scandanavian black metal. This is the classic sound of dark, freezing, lo-fi misanthropy, with blurry pounding drums hammering away in the distance over the sound of a serrated guitar bathed in reverb; it's the sound of fog rolling across a battlefield at twilight, all grim and dark and utterly necro. There are some deviations from the purely necro aesthetic, though -- the eerie intro "Law of Opposites" features grandiose guitar chords and disembodied moaning vocals over a shuffling beat, and the arresting vocal aesthetic is a motif that reappears throughout the album. The other big departure from the war-metal aggression is On "Passage (Out From Illusion)," where droning, dark-ambient guitar swirls around eerie noises, disturbing wordless vocalizing, and unhinged metallic percussion that owes a lot to Abruptum. The rest of the material is closer to the speed-obsessed destruction of early Marduk and the claustrophic sonic hate of Striborg, a combination that makes for a winning vibe of misanthropic evil that will also really annoy your neighbors. This is a band so kvlt they don't even have a website, you'll have to hit the mail link below to get your hands on a copy.
Charnel House
Custodian -- TOIL AND WASTE [Syzmic Records]
Talk about consistency, Custodian has it: this is the third or fourth Custodian release I've heard (the seventh overall) and is every bit as harsh and filled with paint-stripping sonic virulence as the earlier ones were. This time Custodian presents nine tracks of gruesome sonic death in just under thirty minutes, with clanging, screeching soundscapes built on thick layers of power-electronics, grinding industrial loops, and intense walls of harsh noise. It's difficult, if not impossible, to really do anything "new" in the harsh noise genre without turning into something else altogether, but Custodian neatly sidesteps this problem simply by turning the aggression factor up to eleven -- there are no weak attempts at "art" here, no digressions into other styles, just 29 minutes of unrelenting brutality. The tracks are separated by the briefest of pauses, giving the listener almost no downtime from a steady assault of incredibly loud audio violence that begins immediately and without fanfare. This is old-school noise made with the simplest of motivations, designed to obliterate your senses and possibly damage your hearing in the process. Nice? Not even remotely. Intense and punishing? Just the way it should be. Harsheads, take note (and pick up the band's back catalog while you're at it).
Custodian
Syzmic Records
Eddie the Rat -- OUT BEHIND THE 8-BALL [Edgetone Records]
Multi-instrumentalist and full-on eccentric Paul Martin returns with a seventh outing as Eddie the Rat, playing piano with his hands and drums with his feet while the three other members of the quartet hang five in a zone somewhere between the avant garde and unabashed pop stylings. The secret weapon this time around is vocalist Molly Tascone, whose ethereal voice makes a nice counterpoint to the musical chaos. (She also plays xylophone, woodwinds, and various tools of a percussive nature.) The quartet is rounded out by Ronnie Camaro on bass and Dan Ake on percussion and "power tools" (it's an avant thing, you wouldn't understand). So here's the deal: Martin's songs mix classical and pop tones with extended, repetitive song structures rooted more in experimental minimalism and incorporate bursts of bone-rattling percussion (especially on the engaging opener, "My Little Red Stungun"). The album's twelve tracks (four of which comprise the 18-minute ending suite "March of the Haydevil") strike an engaging and surprisingly accessible balance between avant-garde weirdness and highly listenable, sometimes even catchy, pop music. The preponderance of piano -- an instrument that has inexplicably disappeared from much of modern music in the past decade -- is a welcome move as well.
Eddie the Rat
Edgetone Records
The Holly Martins -- NO. NO. YES. NO. [Edgetone Records]
This Bay area trio has an unusual configuration -- alto sax, guitar, and voice -- that immediately sets them apart from the average band. Firmly rooted in the avant garde jazz tradition, they nevertheless sound highly unique thanks to their lack of percussion and the spare but melodious sound of sax and guitar acting in concert. Things are made even more complex and "out there" by vocalist Lorin Benedict's unorthodox approach, featuring unusual cadences, unexpected turns of phrasing, and an expressionist style akin to beat poetry. Without the presence of percussion, the guitar and sax take turns providing the rhythm and melody, sometimes by combining the two concepts to create rhythmic melodies (or is that melodic rhythms?) that create the musical backdrop for Benedict's hyperkinetic vocalizations, making the need for percussion unnecessary. The inspired combination of musical elements here results in a sound that's not only fresh and original, but far more accessible than the concept might suggest on paper. It doesn't hurt that Eric Vogler gets a genuinely beautiful guitar sound that is nicely complemented by the lush and extravagant sound of Kasey Knudsen's saxophone. The surprising part is how little you'll miss the percussion.
The Holly Martins
Edgetone Records
Inhalant -- SAVE OUR SOULS [Syzmic Records]
Noise! It's everywhere! Even in Vernon, TX, a small town pretty much unknown to anyone outside of the state -- but since it's in Tornado Alley and dominated by industrial food processing plants, it's a perfect breeding ground for angst and machine noise. The six tracks here are, in fact, heavily indebted to machine sounds, which often form the backbone over which C. A. Odom slathers generous amounts of hissing white noise and the occasional muffled conversation sample. Odom's approach reminds me at times of The Grey Wolves minus the political content, or Whitehouse minus the hyped-up controversy; there's less emphasis on sheer skull-frying violence and more on the power of repetition welded to a colorful spectrum of white, brown, and pink noise. The throbbing noise attack is especially enthralling on "Body Trap," where the varieties of noise color ebb and flow in overlapping waves over a seething bass-heavy machine rhythm akin to a damaged car running on stripped gears. The intensity factor does increase as the disc goes on, though -- while the tracks continue to be mainly noise over machine rhythms, by the final track, "Save Our Souls," the white noise is thick and corrosive, nearly drowning out the rumbling machinery at work in the background. Now that Whitehouse has gone digital, this makes an excellent substitute for scouring your ears, and your girlfriend won't be as uptight about the content, either.
Inhalant
Syzmic Records
Thollem McDonas and Arrington de Dionyso -- INTUITION SCIENCE AND SEX [Edgetone Records]
What do you get when you put one guy with a beat-up piano and a guy with a bass clarinet together in a recording studio? If the guys in question are McDonas and de Dionyso, you get four boss tracks of synapse-frying drone, that's what. McDonas plinks and plonks at the damaged piano while his clarinet-spanking pal drones and bleats, and the combination sounds absolutely amazing. The minimal instrumentation means the sound resonates freely in the studio space, unencumbered by other sounds -- this is definitely a spacious-sounding album -- and thanks to a remarkably resonant piano, they can (and do) take turns at droning, offering each one the opportunity to solo. Both players get great sounds from their respective instruments, and despite being theoretically limited by the simple choice of instruments, they manage to pull off an incredible variety of sounds, moods, and playing strategies. It's always nice to see players from the avant tribe getting their drone on.
Thollem McDonas
Arrington de Dionyso
Edgetone Records
Murder By Static -- EXSITS [Deadsix Communications]
The ever-prolific Chris Stepniewski returns with another disc that combines elements of techno, breakbeat, noise, and ambient music to create thirteen brief bursts of electronic fury. Drill-press beats are joined by bursts of static, ambient keyboard washes, and other forms of electronic effluvia in a series of shifting configurations. Despite the constantly changing layers of sound and noise, the basic aesthetic is rooted in an agitated and often noisy form of drum 'n bass built on galloping techno rhythms -- this is caffienated music, to be sure. There are moments of ambient grace to give the listener some breathing room, but those moments are fleeting; most of the time the action is intense and built on heavy jackhammer rhythms. Whether these sound snippets actually constitute songs or not is debatable, but there's no question the intent is to set your body in motion, and regardless of the song structures, it definitely qualifies as aggressive body rock.
Murder By Static
Deadsix Communications
Murder By Static -- LUXICON PHASE [Deadsix Communications]
This disc -- released before the previously reviewed one, if you're keeping track of such things -- is similar to that one (and the rest of the one-man band's canon). The eleven tracks are various combinations of frantic techno beats, strange noises, ambient washes of sound, and electronic debasement. The tracks use these regular elements as snippets of recombinant DNA, adding and subtracting layers of electronica and noise over hard and high-tempo beats; the result is a series of mini-soundtracks steeped in sonic violence. Like previous releases, the songs on here are less actual songs than beat-heavy electronic confections, but they're designed to stimulate physical motion on the dance floor, and in that respect they're highly successful. There's no shortage of punishing beats to accompany the constant stream of sonic frippery; for devolved electronica, this is pretty intense stuff.
Murder By Static
Deadsix Communications
Seeded Plain -- LAND TRACTS [Featherspines]
Public Eyesore mastermind Bryan Day sure is in a lot of bands; this one, with Jay Kreimer, is the latest. Both are credited with "objects, time" -- a nifty way of saying they like banging on things in cryptic waves of rhythm (or maybe anti-rhythm, if you're one of those people who insist on having your beats evenly spaced and all that boring stuff). Here they spend six tracks (with titles like "arise-d" and "namstre-d" -- don't ask me what it all means, I'm out of the loop here, dig?) banging and clanging on a variety of mysterious objects with a fever that's not quite completely random but certainly not persistently consistent enough to approach commercial music. There's some intriguing honking and bleating on "arise-d" that might be samples, found sound, or audience participation, occasionally leavened with feedback and springy noises and shouting. Fizzy noisemaking rears its head among the chaotic improvisation on "done-d" along with an actual rhythm manifested through some obscure item drafted into service as a percussion item. The other tracks proceed in similar fashion -- which is to say, lots of screeching and scrunching and thumping and bumping -- as the duo display great enthusiasm for demonstrating the sound of unpredictability. Like all live improv, it sounds pretty enigmatic divorced from the visuals, but the random factor keeps it entertaining.
Seeded Plain
Featherspines
Uke of Spaces Corners -- FLOWERS IN THE NIGHT [Corleone Records]
Dan Beckman and Amy Moon O.S. are proponents of lo-fi noise folk (or something like that); the songs on their third album are sparse and hypnotic, driven by simple arrangements built as much around incidental noise as truncated folk guitar. Muted percussion and spiky piano make the occasional appearance, but mainly their sound is that of a folk duo performing in a space invaded by jagged shards of ambient sound. It's a strange but bizarrely compelling aesthetic, all in service of deceptively simple (but not simplistic) songs about dogs, tea, arugula, and other equally esoteric subjects. This is the sound of the Velvet Underground gone acoustic and harmonizing on obscure folk ditties, lo-fi and transcendent, enigmatic without being welded to unnerving academic concerns. These are the songs you expect homeless avant musicians to play on cheap acoustic guitars to pass the time on a cold winter's eve, singing together while huddled around the fire burning in a cast-off oil drum. Evocative and mysterious, it's the place where traditional folk songs meet the new lo-fi ethos. Strange, yes, but oddly comforting in its own demented way.
Uke of Spaces Corners
Corleone Records
Yehudit -- IN THE ZONE [Edgetone Records]
Violinist Yehudit brings the swinging sounds of what I think of as cocktail jazz -- smooth and serene, but occasionally fizzy like a good martini -- on this disc. Accompanied by a chamber jazz ensemble employing drums, vibraphone, bass, guitar, sax, and clarinet, the band percolates with rhythmic style as Yehudit waxes melodic on both electric and acoustic violin. The instrumentation makes this a strong fusion of the classical and jazz worlds, and the talent of the ensemble is significant enogh that the driving, complex rhythms are executed with unerring precision -- and yet the sound is loose and nimble, focused without being uptight. Yehudit's quixotic melodies build off the rhythmic foundations in seamless fashion, adding yet another dimension to the layers of sound. The band cooks in energetic fashion without becoming strident, and on "Mango Nights" and "The Hidden Place," even manages to be languid and introspective. The band's busy but enthusiastically engaging sound benefits from a tendency toward polyrhythmic intensity and strong, innovative melodies, resulting in seven strong tracks that don't require a degreen in jazz or avant philosophy to enjoy.
Yehudit
Edgetone Records
Robert Ziino -- AN UNUSUAL DAY IN MONTANA [Experimental Artists]
Each of the twelve tracks on this disc is exactly five minutes long, and each of those five minute pieces is an electronic soundscape incorporating bleeps and bloops, strange noises, and chopped-up keyboard samples. If you've heard Ziino's previous work, then this will come as no surprise -- this is similar in style and execution to his earlier albums -- and the only real difference is a changing palette of sounds and a more pronounced affinity for songs anchored in rhythm. Beats abound, albeit mostly in simple fashion, forming a framework over which devolved sonic bleating, tweaked and processed, wavers back and forth like electrically charged drunks in the machine. The arbitrary five-minute limitation to the tracks is offset by the tendency within each track for one set of sounds to fade away and mutate into others; this makes it difficult to tell where tracks begin and end without consulting the cd player clock, but it also makes the tracks more unpredictable. As always, Ziino comes up with a swell-sounding bank of sounds, most of it pure electronic tones, some of it bordering on white noise; the use of highly repetitive and infectious rhythms provides a steady baseline sound over which he solos freely with processed sounds. Strange and colorful, the tracks bear little resemblance to traditional songs, but the sheer variety of sounds and cold, cold beats will do much to warm the cockles of the electronerd's heart.
Experimental Artists
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