Category Archives: REVIEW

‘The Pale Light’ marks just the sixth release from Elm Recordings, the new tape label run by Kryssi (Colorguard) out of New Haven, CT.  Elm City resident Jon Eriksen keeps his discriminating appearance short and sweet with two long-form tracks split between the short-form sides of a C15.  Fitting, the exiled Swede has run a tight ship, poring over the most recent incarnation of his sound with semi-regular performances and even scanter releases (his LP will be an embarrassment of riches when it drops later this year.)  While familiar to harsh noise of a technical, high-definition sort – his earlier CDrs have a strong resemblance to the most surgical cuts of John Wiese – Eriksen’s work of the last few years has migrated toward maximal melodic ragas verging on Tim Hecker and Fennesz.  Side A, “The pale light, white and muted” (the titles will thrill the loftiest of impressionists), is a turgid blast of metallic squawk and sing refracted and illuminating a coarsely carved background.  On the reverse, “In the dusk, hiding” exhibits more a singular focus, familiar to the processed guitars of Jef Ledesma and Alex Cobb.  Now emitting as a source of light, the shard of a cursor jags wildly in the upper registers, vibrating white hot at its edges and distorting the surrounding sound field.  Demonstrating a similar interest in the biomechanics of Menche, and without the totalizing experience of overt Noise worshippers, Eriksen’s rescaling of harsh patches within the rhythmic grid evokes the new generation of electronica on the Invada label, where the maturing technology of noise is returned to a rediscovered context of musicality.  My favorite from the artist so far.  Paper inserts and pasted labels, in a hand-numbered edition of 110 tapes. Very recommended.

Elm Recordings cassette
$4
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It’s always an occasion when Kranky drops an album from a first-stringer, and more often than not, these come in multiples to heighten the excitement. While this plurality mostly provides rich contrast and the sheer awe of being alive among these specters, it can, at times, harmonize destructively to the detriment of the lesser works. Such was the tragedy of the debut by Chicago’s Implodes, having been released in close company with the absolutely perfect ‘Common Era’ by Belong. While ‘Black Earth’ revised and resubmitted the raw, syncretic brilliance of their Plus Tapes demo, the voice of rust-belt psychrock times Jewelled Antler weird was too new, and it lost the credit of its signature spook to the masterly Belong. For their follow-up, Implodes come bundled with the most recent from youthful stalwart Benoit Pioulard, the baroque ‘Hymnal’. Where that album reduces any remaining diachronies by pitting the very singular Pioulard (Thomas Meluch) against the full-band of ‘Recurring Dream,’ the loveless sound of the latter is only bolstered – like a micro-climate – by the precedent of the ‘Mirroring’ LP from last summer as a divergent track of pedal reverb over fuzz.

Affirming their mission, ‘Recurring Dream’ begins with the sequel-intro “Wendy 2,” enrolling the lurking goth of Blessure Grave to compliment the sensible “I” statements of the Midwestern rhythm section which launches “Scattered in the Wind.” Twee bass lines and acid solo lines cross over the him and her duets significantly upgraded by the vocal presence of Emily Elhaj, evoking several generations of Sonic Youth in the immediate wake. The tick tock of “Sleepyheads” smelling of ‘EVOL,’ the tubular dreariness of “Necronomics” rips the best (Ranaldo) ripper off ‘Dirty.’ Quickly making a convention of it, the band frequently pair paper thin scales for lead over crawling bass grooves – again evoking Blessure Grave, but with greater precision – on “You Wouldn’t Know It” framing a dusky baritone with strange sines, on “Bottom of the Well” an even application of minor chords and chorus effects in an impressionistic ripple, recalling the elemental idolatry which made ‘Black Earth’ so multi-sensory. Despite all these wonderful modes to choose from, the band gel most straight-forward when embracing their post-rock urges on stand-out tracks “Ex Mass” and “Melted Candle,” forming a now neo-classical trajectory skewing My Bloody Valentine to Landing to Paik: soaring scales, muscular rhythm, technophile rack effects. Very recommended.

How this differs from ‘Hymnal’ should go without saying, except as some measure of quality. It’s apples and oranges, ripened in different seasons. Last seen on the very good ‘Plays Thelma’ mini-album from late 2011, Benoit Pioulard is slowly trading his textures for forms, reaching new highs for song structure on these twelve tracks. Erring more than ever for single word evocations to title veiled love songs, Pioulard seems to have inherited the foregone thread from the debut of labelmate Lotus Plaza, where well-tempered treatments triumphed by immaculate melodic conceptions; now it’s “Hawkeye” and “Margin” and “Litiya” achieving that hymnal sublime through the spooky matter of (largely organ-fed) instrumentals “Homily,” “Gospel,” “Knell” – each of which recall the bleary highlights of ‘Thelma.’ Like a spirit filtered through a screen door, every intuitive note arrives specked in analog film, casting a slight afternoon glare. In convenient summary with this sprint through the Kranky gallery, “Foxtail” summarizes the missing link of Low’s ecstatic spirituals, offset in methodical trails and reverent verses. A familiar repentance of maturity, located on a plane parallel to the upstarts above.

Kranky LP/CD
$16/$14
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A new one from the reliably-grimy Husk, and what I believe to be just their second 12” following label-lead Josh Lay’s own. This is another split – a method of pairing affinities which Husk proves skilled in – capturing an odd sort of harsh-dark ambient: The Black Scorpio Underground (Joe Truck Kasher) provides a slow horror concrète, like an ethnographic recording of some fluorescent stockroom conversation, under a warm fat tone of a cover slip to this slide marked “Alone in the Orchard of Souls.” The scene devolves in the sheer sounds of hell – anger, agony, violence – broken by the swing of a clanging hammer which pops right off the vinyl from this gory wash. This mural move seamlessly into Richard Ramirez’s Werewolf Jerusalem playing “Further Suspects in Rail Killings” in an over-affected blizzard of buried orders and a thousand snares played all in the same high school locker room. Paranoid types might think there’s some error in mastering – there develops such an even, steel white noise – but the skin of the recordings ripples and lifts midway, a blister held directly against the glass. No reverberations at all. Yet this too is engulfed, or re-swallowed, and turns white.  The overall effect is quite novel, and allows the disc to function as actual ambient sound with more depth of character than an unground lead, and without losing the bleeding edge of noise.  On avocado barf colored vinyl.

Husk LP
$15
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In like company with the brute-minimalism of Tecumseh and Rale, the ‘Coronal Mass’ C36 is aptly-titled: it is huge, luminous, and 36 minutes long. [That last bit’s not part of the title title, but it’s sure a funny way to start the review!]  Steve Fors (half of The Golden Sores), as Aeronaut, recorded this over the summer. Not like it makes a difference. ‘Coronal Mass’ has no use for that knowledge, cascading, as it does, elliptically around some other axis. Without amplitude, the all-synth-etic sound is pushed to awesome swells and static like the scalar effect of dark matter “out there,” glints of “light” appearing more like less-black. Arriving in a handmade, wooden jewel box complete with stain and metal hardware, screened inserts to match the marking on the cassette and staging to hold it in place, the tape’s biggest competitor is its own container .  For all its austerity, it is not a show of power but endurance, and may leave the listener searching for something deeper having entered the ‘Mass’ via this puzzle box [extra credit for doing this from Brooklyn: a box this size could probably rent for $300/month!]  Like Nurse With Wound’s ‘Space Music,’ NASA’s ‘Symphonies of the Planets,’ or such similar recording-representations of an inner or outer space, the scope of movement here defies human locomotion, indexed through the ear or the rods and cones of analogy, and lends a swaying sickness that is equal parts inner-ear and insignificance at this revelation. You will see some faces, hear some voices, and ultimately drop the connection. I think Fors is trying to break your heart, and not in that good way college kids are always carrying on about.   Edition of 50.

Fabrica Records cassette
$10
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Evoking early Tarantel, when they were just dorks, with similar post-rockers from that cohort of Temporary Residence (Rumah Sakit, Sonna), and Pell Mell, when they were just old nerds – that is, when crowds were “hip” to a very different market – the guitar music of ‘Future Street’ is bright, brief, and self-assured. It’s not arrogance: it’s Bill, recording as William Clay Martin, doing what he likes. Appropriately titled “Look Outside Today,” the jingle of an intro glares this is truly outsider music, but an outside which can no longer be measured by content but context. The simple, careening riffs, the shimmer of drones, the precious title slot that name-checks Pocahaunted – could it be, that once great “demo”, formerly thought dead? It’s certainly no fashion rag toss-off, though it is cassette-only with a Bandcamp emergency contact. The intro is so brief you may take a second look to make sure you didn’t miss anything, when in fact, the C20 runtime is not exhausted on either side. “Shipswatch” too has a bodies-at-rest, slacker vibe to it, more of a first act consuming most of side A. On the reverse, “Temporary Crown” disrupts the setting – pleasantly, though I was cool with what was going on before – artificially aging those ecstatic sounds with the bleed of weaving chords from math rock like Explosions in the Sky and Sleeping People (still in TRL territory, mind you) set in a queasy, possibly not deliberate rhythmic compound. In closing we have the adventures of “Chloe at the Pocahaunted Show,” still set in the soundtracked world, now populated with Eluvium like figurines of springy synthesizer. It’s both syncretic and homage, but not treacly nor too aware of its retrospection. Cassette comes with glossy J-card and nice paper labels in a run of 25 copies.

self-released C20
$4
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I imagine there is some old timey motto among crooks that goes ‘if you’re gonna steal, steal gold.’  This no doubt impressed the troubadours like Matthew Riley (Red Red Ruby), who begins his tape sounding Alan Bishop – wry, agnostic, but seeing it through as Will Oldham, Ben Chasny, and the Jewelled Antler catalog.  In many ways, it is a very traditional folk sound, filtered through lo-fi warble and a certain hard edge of modern embellishment – accentuating the moan of a vowel, the buzz of an organ, the middle-band muck of an electrified guitar.  In this sense, ‘We Dream Alone in the Womb’ feels like a lost Unread release, when Unread was still grounded in the Pennsylvania Riley is coming from.  The tape’s eight tracks all run long, amounting to a LP worth of material and a full-length listen, matted beneath the warm bleed of the cassette.  The effect is what makes the tape a unique listen, and somewhat dizzying, as the voice, that most human of folk conventions, the point of entry, is obscured by the positive effects and negative production.  All told, this pushes an entire song into the distance, more resembling the rock depressions of J. Mascis.  Making this a strong suit, songs like “Cold Silver Dollar” and the title track succeed by a very lack of voice, allowing bending chords and feedback to do the talking.  Rethinking the album by this shoe-gazer codec, the songs are sturdy, familiar, yet disruptive swatches of color and grain, engrossing, and stolen from nowhere.  Painted cassettes come in screened cases and screened J-cards, edition of 48.

MT5 cassette
$5
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This split C32 is a nice return to form of the bad, early days of the cassette revival, when Not Not Fun and Arbor were gluing-on rhinestones and no one got a whole tape to themselves. Shared between Anunziata (Matt Jugenheimer) and Ghost in Salad (Jeff Johnson), the pair of sides demonstrate conspicuous bedside engineering – not “lo-fi”, but “post-fi” – existing more for the vehicle of the cassette than any anti-industry statement a la The Dead C (though Jugenheimer starts sounding pretty Iran-ian toward the end). That’s not to say the musical content is negligible – that claim would cut in both directions in any case – but simply that the act of sitting down with the cassette settles into a particular groove of not-so-distant listening nostalagized in my crinkly brain. The Anunziata track, called “Inspiration Stump,” is something like an irreverent Fennesz parody: centering guitar in the midst of a post-structural electronic swirl, the track’s disparate fits and starts – aggregating three discrete vignettes by my count – veer drunkenly, not dramatically, recasting crunch and clamor with reckless abrasion, as aloof drum programming nods off rather than holding a steady hand. Small, non-reverberated bells and the odd clunked string further tone-down the intrigue, as the side concludes with a Sic Alps/Siltbreezy garage-psych tag that will make you rethink the 13 minutes preceding. On the flip, Ghost in Salad follows a similar progression from tracks (and titles) of formlessness (“Blahhh”, “Penny”) to something with more structural spine (“Fum Flumb”, “Mole”). Similar to the last movement of his partner’s side, each track is drums, voice and percussion, fuzzed and obtuse, but now in shades of twee and stoned. Without closing the loop back around to the more experimental sounds of side A, the tape beckons to some future release – perhaps a long-player, perhaps a monograph – and the emergence of more such solid songs from the shadows of cassette nostalgia. Cassettes come with laser printer labels and j-cards, in an edition of 100.

self-released cassette
$5
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Austin, TX’s Silent Land Time Machine makes its second appearance, following a full-length debut on the sadly foregone Time-Lag. With a title to make Celer smile, the 12” EP ‘I Am No Longer Alone With Myself And Can Only Artificially Recall The Scary And Beautiful Feeling Of Solitude’ additionally offers a sound supplementary to bedroom romantics all over. From the glum, psychological poetry of the title to the images of soviet monuments stylized on the cover art, SLTM confronts the world in avatars and sonic photoshopping, representing life in emotional mash-ups of musical expressionism under a heavy patina. That patina is affect, broadly-defined, turning the general matter of these tracks into micro drones from out of which, sometimes (most times), a rhythm or hint of melody ascends like stereograms. Something like a low-tech Lucky Dragons or less spooky version of Ireland’s Plinth, “Even Floating Islands Fall,” “Automata,” and “An Own to One’s Room” electrify hammer and pluck with effects adding the swell of strings and voices to a state of reverie. Though hardly dance music, beats do appear and at times consume, as “Kissa” emerges from an ecstatic rabble reminiscent of Polmo Polpo. Creating a dynamic tension within this relatively short collection, “Remembering Names” and “Dealing w/ Doubt” resemble a third band of the gradient which could tentatively be named “sublime”: sooty and bright like Black Swan, keen on swift amplification, these formless fields of sound aren’t so precious as they first appear, but demonstrate the same blunt theses as Colleen, and similar builders of tallships in bottles. In an edition of 500 on clear, 180 gram vinyl in heavy sleeves. Recommended.

In good, albeit mixed company on the Indian Queen label is ‘Quartz’ by Smokey Emery (Daniel Hipolito). With a deceptively Noisy, yet ultimately apt sleeve collage, “abrasive” is the first quality familiar from more conventional Noise Music.  But this abrasion does not emerge across a frequency, but at a higher order of phrasing and obscurantism   Like the SLTM release above, Hipolito exercises a theoretical stripe of minimalism, disguised beneath the affective textures of copious effects (and in this regard, even more resembling Black Swan).  From the snared repetition of track one (“Movement VI [Jumping the Fire]”) to the bleary offset of track three (“Movement V”), he deconstructs down to a (torn) thumbnail, an equation, then runs the program with all sliders up. Where new formations appear, there is a strong whiff of melancholia – some particular moments from Hexlove first came to mind – but soon this seems accidental, where the true formula rests unfeeling, just beneath the surface.  Thus, ‘Quartz’ comes freighted from below with a sense of uncanny and general creepy which is entirely foreign to his labelmate, generating a wonderful contrast between a joyful noise and a noise more purely kept.  In an edition of 300 copies on black vinyl.

Indian Queen Records LP & 7”
$16/$8
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‘Duets For Abdelrazik’ is a set of songs dedicated to political prisoner Abousfian Abdelrazik of Canada by way of Sudan.  Coordinated by the pianist and the disc’s constant collaborator Stefan Christoff, these six duets emerge idiomatically like jazz, but resemble more the “neoclassical” strain of post-rock music.  Christoff is joined by instrumentalists like Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, Land of Kush), Rebecca Foon (Esmerine, Silver Mt. Zion), Matana Roberts (Sticks and Stones) – folks repping the melancholic, avuncular adult-contemporary strains from the Montreal collectivities such as Alien 8, Madrona (Foon’s label), the scenes at La Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo, and the session heads hanging out at Hotel2Tango.  “Instrumentalist” is a key distinction of these technician-types: their sound is neo-classical in the sense of never abandoned, that romantic sentiment, but coming from the relative outside – think Rachel’s or Town & Country – rather than the “inside man” antics relating more to postmodernism, as in Michael Nyman or Laurie Anderson. The “duets” of the title in this sense refer first to the instruments themselves, not in some virtuoso contest, but appearing in the earthy hues of folk music.  The instruments are fostered to represent themselves (often non- and extra-western selves), in a minimalist recursion, and the players themselves disappear back to type on the sleeve, abstracted as the title of each track.  It may seem glib, but the best way to describe each is simply: duet of piano and saxophone, duet of piano and violin, duet of piano and buzuq, and so forth.  For example, though Peter Burton’s contribution on contrabass severely enhances Christoff’s fine-dining ballad, the germ of this track is really the timbrel juxtaposition rather than some profound revision of composition.  Similarly, the 12 minute collaboration with Shalabi’s oud sees the more traditional structures of the instrument’s design take lead while the piano responds in a craftsperson’s aphorism.  The idiom is stable, mature; this musicianship is “pedestrian” not in a critical but in a political sense, proud of its sure-footedness and presence, similar to the reclaimed ether when we “take back the night”.  Stamped CDrs come in heavy, screened chipboard sleeves with an insert.

Speaking of what came to be known as “post-rock”: ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!’ proves it’s politics as usual for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, still proudly made in Montreal, like Christoff’s duets or the sonic “casserole” protests sampled at the end of opening track “Mladic”.  Ten years since the last release (and three since they broke hiatus to play live), GY!BE are as well-prepared as possible to resurface, with their regular artistic effacement and their cautious, caring, and always sporadic release schedule back in the 20^th century.  Still, a decade will necessarily tack-on mythologies and impossible expectations for anyone, particularly the first band you ever liked with a cellist and projectionist.  How did they manage to land on their feet?  Well first, it’s not like they ever “retired”: the essential, communal nature of the ensemble, their manufacture at Constellation records, and the scene at large has meant the band retains limber authority in addition to the authorship of their legacy.  In sum, they have the chops and the rights to tell us what they mean.  Second, and more important, is they do so in the plainest terms: the structures of ‘Allelujah!’ are conventions in the strictest sense.  It is conventional in the sense of tradition, in the face of a liquid modernism.  Familiar to the GY!BE formula, the elements are all there: caterwauling strings, minor chord phrasings, anthemic guitars, sinister bits of found dialogue, and of course, that Fibbonacian swell and break of triumphant tragedy and beauty.  The filmic screens are there – the band having in many ways defined how we imagine the new mediated soundtrack – with the evasive prose of the soundbites and titles, commenting with even consistency the radical platform which others would have furnished and forgave by now.  The dread and faith of the activist, the integration of zine-writing, the “personal” politics in street art – impressionistic as they may be, they willingly spill-over the edges of the page, disc, canvas – the “album”, most definitely.  The songs stand alone, observing only the most tentative balance based in contrasting dynamics: the accumulating overtures of “Their Helicopters’ Sing” bleeds into the jubilant minimalism of “We Drift Like Worried Fire” to the droning, psychedelic dirge of “Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps Erable”.  This is the idiom which defines post-rock (and, to be sure, it is the first quality lost in its commercialization as a genre).  It is the founding statement, and the reason GY!BE hasn’t lost their footing: they ceded no ground in the first place.

Howl! Arts Collective CDr
$15
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Constellation LP/CD
$18/$12
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Two new releases from the ever-evolving Land of Decay, both debuts which help the spread of LoD’s darkness across the aesthetic field, and the label’s continued pursuit (and attainment) of excellence. Seriously.

‘The One Who Infests Ships’ by The Subtraction is a three-track C40 of vacant, dark ambience with a strong electronic presence. Swallowing all of side A, “Noden’s Breath” is a hulking, menacing demigod of a composition, evoking landslides and epochal changes with deep rumble and cutting frictions. Motoric churning, gusty drones, and telephonic bleats generate most of the palate – think Pulse Emitter in a terrestrial mode, or Luasa Raelon but not so alien. The title track fills most of the second side with this contemptuous mixture like the audiograph of a weather machine, shifting slightly midway to feature a guitar-like volley of high-tension distortion, the thing moves without a narrative arc, bringing life to this sinister entity without any closure or comment. With such pairings as The Subtraction (that is, Jason Soliday and Omar Gonzalez), it’s always a riddle to parse-out such collaborative noise, to figure who’s contributing what, if it’s more than the sum of its parts; or, as in the case of the present, when no two parts are distinguishable, to riddle what such a union will not reveal. On pro-cut cassettes with full-color art.

Kapustin Yar stake one foot in the relentless traditions of black metal – with its vaporous voices, despondent chord progressions, and geeky obsession with esoteric citations – to establish the long-player ‘Trithemius.’ This foot planted, they extend the other to slowcore: jangly guitars, sparse yet articulate beats, and screen passes with broad vistas. This is the difference which makes a difference, such that subsequent moves toward prog-metal and industrial EBM are rerouted in novel ways. The most quotable, “Sea Altar,” features the guitar-pro effects of Tool in a deftly-looping groove; “Dirge” is like a composite psych-rock track made only of the standard deviation – the substantive mean having been gutted from the recording – leaving a whispy, tail-spun bombasmus behind; and the tape’s highlight and only track to surpass 10 minutes, “Collapsing Palace” is a postrock epic dosed on superfuzz and undergirded with concrète mise-en-scene [in case of reissue: please remaster to 10”]. In the finale, the title track is something of a head-slapper – spoiler alert – as the tape’s emergent tribalism is manifest in a crushing poly-rhythm with channel-skipping drones and bleeding feedback, affecting some imagined ceremony. This reconvergence around citations of the un-cited forebearers of contemporary black metalheads is much welcomed as a gesture of honesty and earnestness toward the entire community. On pro-press, ruby red tapes with art by Terence Hannum. Highly recommended.

Land of Decay cassette
$6.5
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