Black Motor - Vaarat Vastukset (Dreamsheep CD)

Just published at Foxy Digitalis:

Given the menacing group name and the cover’s dour processional, I’ve got to say I expected a little more doom and gloom from Black Motor. And while much of the music here does have a chaotic and somewhat sorrowful slant, it is done so in a more refined and traditionally bluesy angle as the unit explores the six original compositions within.

In fact, Black Motor has little to do with Black Sabbath or Motorhead and everything to do with “Yasmina, a Black Woman.” A trio comprised of Sami Sippola, Ville Rauhala and Simo Laihonen, the group pushes the boundaries of post post-fire improvisational discourse on this disc, mixing equal parts AACM, Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders while infusing their sound with a textural, ritualistic approach that manages to carve out their own corner in the free jazz world.

One of the units main strengths is their willingness to pull at will from any number of instruments. Ranging from the expected (tenor sax, double bass, drums, voice) to the underused (bells, gong, bamboo flutes) the group explores an open and fertile dialogue driven by more by mood than mode. Perhaps this is no more clearly visible than on the opening “Yksi Sinulta Puutuu,” whose gentle bamboo flutes begin the album atop clattering chimes and a scraping double-bass. It’s an odd combination of sounds, the flute as smooth and fragile as it is and the bass as grating, but each addition serves to amount into a confusing playfulness underlined by Sippola’s screeching sax utterances.

Elsewhere the group explores more overtly melodic material, as with “Aamen,” whose saxophone line sounds like a military call that walks the line between Ornette Coleman’s momentum and Ayler’s own marching excursions. At times his tone even resembles early Gato Barbieri, raspy and deep but nimble as well as it bounces along atop Rauhala and Laihonen’s explosive rhythmic backing.

On the closing “Vainila,” the group once again highlights their strength for subtly stretching improvisational vocabulary as a snaking bass squeal writhes above a dancing drum rhythm and sax bellow. For a group like this it’s tough to say anything new, and indeed this is hardly a redefinition of the forms they’re working in. But these players have such simpatico and are so well versed in their dialogue that it’s tough not to forget how much fun and how listenable this kind of music can be. It is this ability to intermix the more interesting explorative sound excursions with strong compositional material that positions Black Motor as an important and under-known presence in today’s free jazz community.

Andrea Parkins - Faulty (Broken Orbit) (Important Records CD)

Published over at Brainwashed:

Reworking a site-specific piece she performed in 2007 in New York City, this disc finds sound artist Andrea Parkins using a slew of amplified objects along with her own processed accordion to create an hour long work of bloops, blips, and scratches. The combined effect of which transcends genre in favor of a pure and unadulterated sonic exploration for the electronic age, as her myriad patches decompose much of the sound into pieces that situate the listener on the verge of witnessing, in her own words, "things falling apart."

It's an exciting place to be, but a precipitous one as well, and success in this scenario is often judged largely as nothing more than an avoidance of potential disaster. Yet Parkins puts this tendency to rest with ease, breaking the work into six tracks that each explores her immense hi-fidelity electronic swathes interwoven with aurally tactile amplified objects. This can be seen from the get-go, as "i" opens with a series of gentle scrapes that sound like a comb run over a table. Soon electronic washes glide in, adding to the alien trajectory of the work whose overall organizing principles feel more like a Cagean experiment with chance operations and "small sounds" then the contemporary electronic works most prevalent today.

To some extent, it seems to be this distinction that best sums up Parkins' sound. In the environment Parkins sets up, no sound is uninteresting and each detail is worth the attention afforded it in such an open sonic space. It is music whose visual accompaniment might well change the entire effect (as one sees the contact mic'd brushes--or whatever she's using--run across some metallic sheet). Instead, the disc provides only the aural imprint of the work, and the result is refreshingly abrasive without being overtly harsh. This is hyper-reality, not sur-reality.

Elsewhere Parkins uses her processed accordion, an instrument the timbre and effect of which is barely recognizable among the clicks and nearly sterile screes of data breakdown. This is perhaps clearest on "ii," as the accordion tones wheeze and wooze against a noisy field of sound that could well be a recording of some microscopic insect world. Each tone is clear and concise, but barely any sound is decipherable.

Ultimately this means that barely anything on here approaches any kind of groove in the typical sense. Sure, there are drones, patterns, constructions and even notes, but the overall build leaves little to hold on to, making each second as surprising and intriguing as the last. It's refreshing to hear someone who sounds as though even they are discovering the material as the piece is underway, adding to the genuine sense of new that emanates throughout the work. This is not "experimental" music, but what it is is far more intriguing. It is a genuine example of sound exploration that raises an eyebrow in that unique space between curious discovery and terrified intrigue, and that is too rare a thing in a world that so frequently bestows the title of "experimental" upon itself.

Enfer Boreal - Seven Ways (Centre of Wood 3")

Also in from Foxy Digitalis:

With a slew of releases recently on label luminaries such as Peasant Magik, Housecraft, Tape Drift and Stunned, Enfer Boreal’s Maxime Primault has certainly been busy. Usually opting for a lush drone sound, Primault uses his medium well here, stripping back the project for the less expansive 3” format.

And strip back he does. Broken into two tracks, the album is entrenched in static ambiance as the opening “You Say Seven, I See Five” consists of little more than the delayed decay of tiny vocal fragments laid out over swaths of airy, barely-there drone. You could put this on and forget about it almost immediately, which I suppose is the point as it creates an insular intimacy that’s tough to achieve with any more elements present.

If the first track is ambient however, the second, entitled “Dust Whispers, Chocolate Tooth, Lost Jewel,” is downright elusive. Close examination reveals plenty of sounds within, but the overall effect here is one of almost complete quiet. Over the course of its fourteen-plus minutes it does create some footing, moving from the fan rotation opening into soft tinkling bells and looped vocal layers, but everything here is buried deep beneath thick layers of crackling atmosphere. Primault’s smart enough to make it all work though, adeptly pulling out crucial parts that were so distant you could hardly tell they were there until they vanish. Even the combined babblings of crowded voices sounds more like some cave-captured zephyr until their hiss softly dissipates into a gentle guitar loop that typically would serve as only one small part of Enfer Boreal’s rich soundscape. When birdcalls emit outward, they serve as a peaceful closure which succinctly settles the work right where so many of Primault’s pieces begin.

One of Enfer Boreal’s more soft-spoken works, “Seven Ways” leaves a watermark where so many droners stamp their presence down. It may not be Primault’s most emotive, beautiful, or accessible piece, but it doesn’t try to be either. Instead the work serves as a contemplative miniature that, though packed with enough ideas for a full album, is content in the small crevice where it takes residence. A beautiful package.

Chapels - So Many Blood-Lakes (House of Alchemy CS)

Just in from Foxy Digitalis:

House of Alchemy head Adam Richards has been at it for some time, but only recently has his Chapels project really started to make a splash, and rightly so. This cassette represents yet another success for this conjurer of the strange, manipulating tapes and plenty of other indecipherable sonic obscurities into a brew of garble that treads the line between the “what the hell was that?” sound of Sick Llama and the meandering (de)constructivist slant of Trauma guitar slinger Chris Riggs.

Breaking each side in two, Richards presents four distinct realizations of a similar aesthetic. The first side opens with “Who’s Your Creep?,” which is as good a title as any I suppose considering the deranged string twangs and odd atmospheres concocted. Nice pace here; real slow and mushy without turning into anything significant, as these sorts of dabblings too often do. Rather, each sound is allowed its say before moving along toward some other thwap, twang or wooze. “Wet Heat, Part I” closes the side with a denser version of the sound, moving into a pretty grim drone that shudders rather than hurls its way forward.

Side two opens with the second part of “Wet Heat,” and this time around it’s a nearly Skaters aesthetic, with the sound of the tape starting up a critical part of the piece as a whole. Rather than pulsing along with this stuff however, Chapels keeps it going with wave after wave of static screech atop small pot and pan intricacies. Neither intentionally harsh nor hip, this is some well-conceived, carefully (but not claustrophobically) controlled stuff. The closing “”Song for that Blue Room” is even more still, delving into the dregs of some basement stove where the kettle’s always on and the brew is mysterious. Dusty and ground down, it’s a fittingly uneasy closer to another winner from this intriguing sonic outlet.

Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (Em Records CD)

Just in from Brainwashed:

Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada has had a bit of a resurgence in the public eye lately due to a number of recent reissues of works that, in retrospect, fit alongside many of the best and most challenging minimalist works of the last forty years. Here, EM presents the fourth and final Wada release in their series with the world premiere of a 1974 performance in Syracuse, New York consisting of a single drone and four Wada-created "pipehorns" tuned to the frequencies of the room itself.

What results is a 162-minute drone work (cut to 77-minutes for the CD version) of near stagnant enormity. Beginning from the drone, an oscillation that takes acoustic information from the room and recycles it back out, each horn enters one by one only to spend the next two-plus hours monolithically exploring the overtone structures of the room in a kind of quartet meditation on sound.

Works like this are, to be fair, not for everybody. This is truly directionless, and the musical change which takes place from beginning to end is near zilch. As with anything this unmoving then, the important question is whether or not the journey from beginning to end achieves its intended effect and whether that effect is worth one's time. The answer to both of these in this case is an enthusiastic yes.

Each horn note's bellow or drone gradually builds the whole into an intoxicating blend of overtones no less effecting than those used in La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano. It is always a pleasure to hear sound and space used in such unity, as it creates a dialogue not so much between the musicians and their instruments but between them and the sound itself. As the room bends and shapes the slight variations in sound it creates an effect far beyond the actual notes played, and it is to this effect that the horn players (Jim Burton, Garrett List, Barbara Stewart and Wada) contribute when playing their notes.

Thus the work is one whose strength comes from its size, as it is only with complete immersion that the piece comes to hold any its potentially meditative intricacy. This is a minimalism far removed from Reich and Glass's restructuring of classicist forms and is far nearer to the ritual spirit of Angus MacLise, the stark and simple structures of Alvin Lucier and the tonal attunement of Pandit Pran Nath. Often such works are touted as lost classics, but it is rare that it is actually the case. In this situation however, its value is as clear as can be.

Matt Endahl / Christopher Riggs - Pride Obscures It (Holy Cheever Church Records CS)

Another 30-minute slice of Riggs and Co. here on Riggs' own totally esoteric and amazing Holy Cheever Church label. Endahl's a pianist, and Riggs picks up his usual electric this go around for some pretty garbled excursions into the belly of the instrument-as-sound approach. Riggs himself says its like Cage and Cowell as rendered by the Michigan aesthetic, which really sums it up about as well as anything could, but I'll give it the old college try anyhow.

To be fair though, it's tough to avoid the description. Endahl spends most of his time strumming the innards of his ivories, while Riggs' usual brand of scrape and shimmy keeps things mobile and utterly alien. A weird little loop in there of a click throws it off even more while odd little electronic blips and beeps squeeze themselves into the ample space created by the molesting of their combined 94 string destruction. More than anything what always blows me away about Riggs is how he manages to take these sounds and point them in a direction without giving them so much shape as to render their more obscure qualities useless. It's all about mobility here, but a mobility that claims the unknown as its destination. And the two stay right close to each other in approaching it.

The second track answers few of the questions raised at the outset, with odd mini melodies speak n' spelling their way into some seriously thwarted electronic scratch before Endahl's piano thuds about drearily above. There's no deader sound than the dampened insides of a piano, and Endahl uses it in conjunction with the fuzz to create a real slow-burning mystery. Totally amazing.

The second side's low end murmur and clatter opens on a decidedly stiller note than side one, but its atmosphere is equally well drenched in what-the-fuckery. There's an industrial quality to all of Riggs' stuff, but it's always filtered through an avant-garde appreciation for letting a process undergo as it will. Odd dripping percussion and a thick haze, stagnant and immobile, combine and continue long enough to give the setting its own weight. It's always patient, but it never loses the quality of play that keeps it so intriguing. Air vent spouts soon mutter along in the background to add to the "composition."

Man, every time I throw on one of these tapes it blows me away. This is some real deal stuff and as far as I can tell they're all worth snagging. Go to the Holy Cheever Church and start practicing. The light just might be hidden in these little tapes, which somehow still seem to be way under the radar, even compared to far lesser practitioners of the noisy arts.

Transcendental Manship Highway - Lord of the Trees (Carbon Records CD-R)

The epically christened Transcendental Manship Highway is a supergroup of sorts, comprising both Ray and Eric of Burnt Hills/Century Plants fame alongside Stone Baby's Cory Card and Joe Tunis, head of Carbon Records. With so many heavy hitters present in one room at a time, it's sure to be a wild ride, and what results here is a half an hour of brain bending guitar and drum sprawl that immediately brings to mind Skullflower or even some of Dead C's more expansive excursions.

Beginning with a slow drum pulse, the piece only builds, bringing in vocals that soon loop into a frenzy of guitar strewn stretch outs. Bleak? You bet, but there's also something earthy about this in its primordial thump. Welcome to mulch gulch, feel free to get your feet dirty. As the drums keep it all focused the guitars layer upon one another with a cohesion not usually attained with this kind of match-up. And sure Ray and Eric have been playing together for centuries (ha, get it...?) but even they have rarely sounded so cohesive and unified in their vision. Everything here just combines toward the same sound, and it moves too, going from thump riffer to free rock brain-buster in no time.

Come to think of it, excursions like this don't happen often enough in a world where everybody seems to know everybody anyway. And sure, people are all over the place and doing their different things, but enough people are within reach of one another that this sort of option is available and, as is surely the case here, a worthwhile endeavor that manages to expand on all involved parties' work. When the whole thing shudders back down to a close with free drums and guitar lacings it leaves an emptiness that calls for more from these guys together. Let's hope there's more to come.

(VxPxC) - Second Street Tunnel (House of Alchemy CD-R)

Adam over at House of Alchemy sent me a package recently with some of his gorgeous releases. Figured no better place to start than with (VxPxC), a band I've spent much time listening to and no time reviewing. Considering what a sucker I am for a good package, this one snagged my eye before I had any idea it was who it was--the picture here doesn't quite capture it, but the whole thing comes in this great big folded piece of cloth that gives it that relic feel you know?

As for the tuneskies, (VxPxC) are one of these bands who seems to just jam endlessly and, as a result, release endlessly. They've got a billion things out, so it's near impossible to compare one with the rest, but this one definitely fits right in there, if not outright up there with the best of them. The opener, "Distant Joy," is a 17-minute zoner that combines all the unit's usual elements--drone, psych, aimless scrape and clatter--into a nice brew of sludgy backing to some Moloney-style dementia-induced singing. Pretty zonked out stuff, with harmonica and a nicely paced chord progression that provides some footing for the group to slip across.

"Red Hand Shops" follows, and it's of course another mind-bender, taking a less heavy but equally serpentine take on the (VxPxC) sound. When the group lets it loose like this things always get especially weird and spacey, which is nice coming from a unit that could easily retain their grip on the sound at all times. Instead the piece just floats about with odd instrumental entrances and exits alongside the blips and blurps of some cheesy Casio sounding keyboard. Splendid indeed, but not quite so much as the following title track, whose 23-minutes makes up nearly half the disc here. This is where it really goes down, as the group stretch out into some cavernous and dim realms with monk-style chants and heavy rhythms. (VxPxC) always reminded me a bit of a cross between Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood (review coming shortly...) and Sunburned, but this moves in so many directions that it ends up sounding like little else aside from itself. Must have been an especially potent brew that night...

The closing "Little Tokyo" takes the damaged trudge through the last track into more restful territory, with harmonica and surging guitar lines drifting across an open space that finds itself in strangely expansive waters considering the near claustrophobic ambiance of the session. Everything is held together very loosely, but also quite gently, giving it a fragile and undulant quality that makes for a wonderful close. Another killer one from both band and label, and still available from House of Alchemy I believe.

Wet Hair - 08 Tour Tape (Night People CS)

Also from Foxy Digitalis:

With the sad demise of Raccoo-oo-oon this past year, the underground lost one of its most fertile sources for warped and expansive sound journeys. But when one flower withers, an ample amount of bacteria is sure to manifest, and so the circle continues with Night People head Shawn Reed’s new project with Ryan Garbes, Wet Hair. Luckily, the similarities between the two projects more or less stop there, as the latter does a much more in depth analysis of the mental cavities than Raccoo-oo-oon’s epic scale and velocity could allow for.

On this particular tape, the unit split a c30 in half on both sides to present four angles on their sound. Opening with “White Strobe Void,” directionless synth lines seep into garbling electronic lurch that opens things in a rather unsettled fashion. Guess they figure once they have you there they can take you anywhere, and its true. The following “Black Sand” bends the directionless shape of the previous track into a synth pop voyage into the blue yonder, as bouncing lines and cartoon bloops sway along, peacefully building themselves toward something far more intoxicated than the initial cutesiness entailed. Sounds a bit like Ducktails or any of the other current harnessers of tropically good vibes, though it’s a bit more psychedelic and oozy than they’re wont to do, especially when the vocal utterings come drifting in.

The second side opens with “Saturns Return,” which starts more or less where the first side left off. Organ lilts along patiently before fading into a bliss of electronic lines and deep background drone that keeps itself nice and grounded despite the lofty illusions it plays on your upper half. Having disintegrated into a clunkier version of itself, the track soon fades out in favor of the closing “Electric Annihilation,” an ultra-slow excursion into the belly of psychedelic head-noddery. Here, Reed’s thick organ drone progressions and Garbes’ clattering drums mesh into a spaced out void where vocals can drip out from the clustered center. Garbes, for those who haven’t been clued in, is a real motherfucker of a drummer, and he exhibits it here as he balances free improvisational scattershot with undeniable pulse; there’s not a beat underplayed. As the synth comes in and contributes to the wash, the whole thing has an almost minimalist effect as it supports you from below with the sheer quantity of repeating lines. When the vocals enter repeating “we are going” over and over you really can’t help but agree. An impressive effort, as has come to be expected from the Night People camp.

Various Artists - Sun, Smog and Hate (Folktale Records LP)

Just in from Foxy Digitalis:

A compilation is a tricky matter, and the more artists the more dubious the odds of positive results become. Too many artists can spread the album too thin, and too few just feels like a jip for each track you do like. So I was a bit hesitant to throw on this compilation concerning, as its title suggest, sun, smog and hate.

Luckily this little number isn’t half bad, presenting ten tracks by ten artists each focusing on the more depressing qualities of the Golden State and other locales with less fortunate nicknames/attitudes from the get go. You have to admit, it’s a good idea, and the players here come up big with some very humorous, dry and downright obscene portraits of their collective hometowns. That most of these performers typically has a cutesy-ish singer-songwriter slant only makes the grim outlooks more endearing.

So what of the music you ask? Most of the bands here I’ve heard nary a word from, but many of these are the ones coming up the best material here. Clark 8’s “Get Back to It” is a slow drawler that’s snide as hell, while John Thill’s “Smog Machine” cuts hastily from indie vocalizings to feedback crunch without so much as a bridge. Other luminaries come in the form of French Quarter’s taught and fertile melodic pop sensibility on “Overpassing” (which also appeared on his recent release, “Ugly Unknowns”) and Andrew Jackson Jihad’s exceptionally brief call for contentment on the amazingly titled “Hate Sick Hard Party Pt. 2 .Com.” Asleep in the Sea’s “Microcosm” is an orchestrated work of real scale and depth that leans to the sunny side, closing the record on a less sarcastic and, dare I say, hopeful note.

A really nice little compilation, nobody stands too tall above anyone else and the loose thread of thematic material holds the LP in order. It airs on the poppy side, but it’s good to hear that this kind of music is still being done with such dignity, creativity and sneer.