StratRes014: VLK – ‘Avril and Sean in Camden’ C53
Avril and Sean in Camden is constructed entirely out of processed sounds from a) Avril Lavigne’s debut album, and b) conservative talk-radio hosts from the mid-naughties. To draw, specifically, from precocious, Canadian, proto-emo skate-pop and far-right, moralizing, authoritarian resentment-peddlers was not arbitrary. In the summer of 2004, VLK undertook temporary employment which primarily involved being a passenger in a car that was driven around Camden, New Jersey. Though the job description was undemanding, it arose that a key responsibility for this role was to engage the driver/employer in conversation, thus enhancing the work environment (a Toyota Camry). Regretfully, it became soon evident to both parties that this personal objective would not be achieved, and the driver, activating his contingency plan, put into use his preferred auditory stimuli, i.e. conservative talk radio broadcasts and the glove compartment’s lone compact disk, Avril Lavigne’s Let’s Go. In Camden, the birthplace of modern convenience food, the home of the first Church of Scientology, a city beset by the poverty and crime not uncommon in post-industrial American small cities, VLK spent two months in silent shotgun, bombarded with the pleas from Lavigne and Hannity for simple answers to the increasingly complicated world outside of the Camry’s windows. This kind of prolonged auditory experience, one can imagine, could leave the listener with some degree of lasting psychological damage, though keeping with the spirit of the Goldwater rule, it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on this particular case. We can report that this album sees VLK connecting his conceptual sample collages to personal experience, and distilling that into a hazy, beat-heavy, absurdist electronic melange.
StratRes015: moduS ponY – ‘Phonogetic Ouch’ C22
While not entirely free of generic reference or conceptual foundation, Phonogetic Ouch leans toward the avant-garde. If there are themes to be found, they are stylistic and abstract. Phono is an exploration of rhythm, specifically that of vocal loops, on which most of the tracks are founded. Traditional compositional structures exist along side more experimental frameworks, a common pairing for moduS ponY. The production is occasionally treated the same way a DJ might treat sampled material, with effects or edits being applied to the entire master track, adding an unexpected layer of sonic reality. The term “Phonogetic” combines the root phono with the words photogenic, and diegetic (the later meaning: within the story world, typically of a movie).
Peter Kris makes music with German Army, Q///Q, Final Cop, and other projects from the forsaken confines of the Inland Empire. Like the beauty of mountain ranges, beaches, city lights and skylines under whose shadows so many toil away their days, may the music of Peter Kris serve as a respite, a few moments of joyous inspiration, to all who need a little more happiness in their all-too-fleeting private hours. Limited edition of 65.
Mastermind Justin Wright brings together a rare line-up featuring two drummers. The four-piece only lived during a short period of time and the thunderous experiments achieved by these unique sonic hypnotists are fully presented here. With an impressive discography of transcendent kosmische drones, slow-burn psychedelic magnetism and heavier sounds behind him, Wright decided to set a new milestone with America Here & Now Sessions. Freely touching distant, dark corners of the cosmos where the sun shines timid, the band slowly builds two long movements of truly mesmerizing, free-form quality that propels the listener even higher to maximum altered state of consciousness. Warm, harmonic, meditational analog synth explorations get eventually accompanied by bursting, ritualistic percussions and distorted guitar tones, while a gloomy welcome ceremony of heavier guitar jams paints a grand canvas of seriously dark psychedelia. America Here & Now Sessions was recorded during the three-week art experience started in Kansas City featuring paintings, sculptures, poetry, plays, films and music from local and national artists called “America: Now And Here – A cross-country traveling dialogue about America through the arts”. Local musician Ashley Miller spearheaded a recording project that featured a handful of local acts to record some music that would be later edited together and released as an album. The project lost funding, but Expo Seventy was able to record as part of the art experiment. Limited edition of 100, screen printed covers.
RIYL: Zombi covering Air covering Zombi, an 80’s Tangerine Dream soundtrack sans all the annoying guitar solos, an ineffable sense of loss. Live drum and analog synth duo Bolabit mine a snow globe of nostalgia and regret, a pastel-hued Michael Mann flick from the middle part of his canon, maybe a movie about drug smuggling on some west coast port or something of the sort. The sand parts beneath your slowly falling body in a slo-mo replay while puffs of passing bullets strike the beach all around you, your body twisting in a futile effort to avoid the dull, hard projectiles that angrily pass through this vessel you’ve foolishly endangered merely for greed and foolish avarice, a vessel now perforated and leaking, becoming soft and distant as the surf around the waterline reddens and grows. The swells tug you into the shallows and the beach is silent as you slip under and away – it wasn’t supposed to end like this but your scene is over.
Experimental pop and chronically anxious duo based in nyc. Likes noise and loops and sweetboy harmonies. Debut album out 8/21, day of the next total solar eclipse. Light bleeding out the edges of dark / pop creeping out under a bed of noise. edition of 25.
Kicking it right off with a forceful synth overtone and never relenting. Five tracks of uniquely varied elements placed in a forward thinking context: industrial synth dread, concrete audio voyeurism, and naturally ocurring harsh noise. Compelling narrative work from a young artist at the height of his powers. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork by JB.
Acousmatic sound research from veteran bay area technician Jim Haynes. Electronic distress signals initiate panic and tension through abrupt jump cuts into alternate contexts. Echoes of John Duncan, Hafler Trio and Joe Colley hover above and around Jim’s soundworld, but his aesthetic is a universe all his own. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork by JH.
Following up shortly after MT’s Hostage Pageant release with Shane Church’s sibling project. Crude, simple, yet direct tracks utilizing room sounds and amplified metal instruments. Patient and organic, yet heavy handed tape music for noise heads. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork by Shane Church + JB.
Third cassette from Rachel Slurr, mid-atlantic noise queen and former den mother of Heaven’s Gate. Six tracks of true American Noise; arguments, attitude and depravity flying the flag through junk metal gutter abuse. Edition of 100 copies, with full color artwork by Rachel Slurr + JB.
Tape reissue of a crucial and hard to find recording from the tape manipulation master, initially released on Hanson Records in 2006. A complete maelstrom of hiss. Professionally duplicated and imprinted chrome tapes, double sided color art. Limited to 130 copies. Free US shipping.
ZOD1AC is the beat-centric alias of Zander One. The music still holds the Zander One feel, but with more beats. The style is Chillwave, Lofi, Hip Hop Vibes.
So there was a time some 33 years ago when some Robert Scott, Alastair Galbraith, Michael Morley and Bruce Russell happened to share a flat in Dunedin. What sounds like a legend from that never written book of the very unlikely history of New Zealand music is indeed a fact. More or less accidentally, some recordings by two of the mentioned gentlemen found their way to Germany on a self-burned CDr. Their names: Scott and Galbraith. Those songs have never been released before. Limited edition of 60 pro dubbed cassettes.
It’s the songs of toads, of antelopes and insects Jeremy Hegge captured in the Limpopo Valley Bushveld in South Africa. Hailing from Sydney, Hegge has already built an amazing body of work from the lonely places all over Australia. There’s a special approach in the way he lets the compositions of nature go their own direction, still finding his own tone in the sounds and noises that surround the broad and deserted regions. Which are never lonely. Limited edition of 50 pro dubbed cassettes.