Sick Llama & Ben Hall - KillDevilHills (Brokenresearch 3")

Here's an oldy but goody that Ben lay on me a bit ago. Been waiting to get around to this for a while, especially as I'm such a fan of the 3" format, and Ben always does it right with his Brokenresearch operation. This time around its a tag team effort with Fag Tapes head Heath Moreland, whose twelve cassette box set last year was one of the most epic things I've heard in a while. Always wanted to review it but it was just too far reaching to wrap my head around... regardless, this combo is an intriguing one; Ben's drum work often gets into grinding cymbal explorations, and its this approach that he wisely takes in playing with the twisted tape and whacked clarinet of Moreland.

At only two tracks and eighteen minutes, the unit open slow, leaving ample space for each voice to individually be heard. Both of these dudes, though vastly different in approach, are into the industrial scrape and lowercase improv combo, and it is in this realm that they find common ground. Ben's cymbal batterings skim off Moreland's analog gestures and crunched clarinet lines as the duo move into stark and dismal waters. Very thoughtful in its own way, as neither party delves into their chaotic potential.

The second track traverses similar ground with muttering underbellies interacting among drills and shards of instrument remnants. Considering the typically singular vision of Moreland, it's nice to see him use these same techniques in reaction to Hall... actually a surprisingly elastic approach considering the usual depth of his lines. The whole thing ends up sounding kind of like a stripped down, half-buried Graveyards, though with a bit fewer overtly jazz influenced moments. Instead it's all texture and feel, and the two prove to mesh wonderfully. Too short, but killer nonetheless. Gotta wonder if the tandem will ever do it again, but we can certainly hope...

Ophibre / Hunted Creatures - Split (Oph Sound CS)

If I recall correctly, I mentioned in that last Ophibre review from Brainwashed that there was more on the way. This is more, and it's here. Ben had told me he'd be sending me some stuff, but when I got this tape I was floored. This beautiful textured paper tied with a rope encasing a transparent print with a tape inside? Put a shiver in me timbers, you know? It's the sort of mystery that too often is lacking with this stuff, and a lovely display of how packaging and music can combine into something greater than the sum of its parts... lovely.

As for the sounds, the first side is Ophibre's, and he opens the tape with a typically cavernous and slow-moving drone work called "A Harem of Moths." Rossignol really gets the power that can be generated by stillness, and this work hovers somewhere between the folds of two parallel universes as it drifts ever outward. There's always a sense of enormity with his stuff, as each sound is intricate and thick, but there's never an overabundance of it, so you really have the opportunity to find the different crevices and let them work their magic. Careful combination of barely perceptible high end weave about above vast stretches of didgeridoo monolith drones. Beautiful, heavy and mature in its vision, as is typically the case with this material.

The second side of this pairing presents Hunted Creatures, which I believe is Pittsburgh's Ryan Emmett. Practically anything would sound mobile next to Ophibre's work, but Hunted Creatures fits snuggly in there, presenting two tracks. The first, "Live at Brick Bat Books 8/22/08," has hovering bass dornes intersecting with high end bat (fitting...) cries and chirps that maneuver about quite nicely above the bestial undertones. Nice washes come and go, but this too has a distinct patience and caution about the sounds used, especially when he takes the drone back down to nearly nothing, leaving only a slow bass pulse and slight gestures. It's nearly ritualistic sounding, and one really gets the sense that he's closing the piece with a clear sense of story. The second track, awesomely titled "Himalaya of Skull," is equally vast and well crafted.

Too often drone works fade in, do their thing, and fade out, but both of these guys have a real grasp on how to structure this sort of sound. While Ophibre creates it and then more or less lets it be, Hunted Creatures brings in an unexpected sense of musicality and implores sounds and approaches not usually used in these contexts. The result is a beautiful tape that surely demands ample flippage. Killer.

Burnt Hills - Amphipacifica (House of Alchemy CD-R)

Ah, another Burnt Hills. The Albany crew's been busy lately, having just released this, a Ruralfaune number and a beautiful Noiseville LP, all of which will likely be covered here. Figured I'd start with this one though, as Adam from House of Alchemy just got in touch with me randomly about a day after getting handed a bunch of stuff from his label and Chapels project. Small world.

As far as this particular disc goes though, it's a totally wild one. Stripped down to, would you believe it, a quartet, Jack, Ray, Eric and Sick Llana get together for an hour long cathartic blast. If you're thinking that Burnt Hills are losing their edge then ("These guys are going all soft on us, what with this quartet approach--who do they think they are, the Stones?"), well, you thought wrong. Rather this is one of the most chaotic, noisiest discs in the unit's cannon, a total shredder of a track whose guitars interweave into a psychedelic cesspool atop gently writhing drums. The usual you say? Me thinks not. Eventually this thing dissolves into the thickest batch of noise these guys have ever conjured. Totally grinding, menacing stuff, the latter half of this bad boy is unforgiving as hell. Thick analog murk does battle with increasingly lethargic drum builds that speak to the physicality of the approach. Some weird synth stuff eventually takes over for a bit, bouncing all over the place with jubilant distress. I'm guessing this is Ray, as he's usually the man manning the pedal setup at shows, and he has a knack for taking his vocals and turning them into some truly odd blips, shrieks and creaks.

When the rest join back in, it is utter demolition, with screeching guitars rebounding around the concrete walls of Helderberg's underbelly as they ascend toward noise-screech heaven. Really sprawling stuff, and totally unforgiving in its vision as always. Gorgeous work in an absolutely beautiful package complete with see-through wax paper and gold prints. A killer manifestation of this unit which shifts personnel every Monday night. The fluidity of such an approach however, rather than closing off possibilities, opens them up into a canvas of thick internal instrument unification. As always, a slayer.

Scribbler - My Old Lady (Stumparumper Records 7")

The whimsically named Stumparumper Records sent me this 7" recently, and I've been trying to get around to it for a while but, of course, haven't had the time. Finally do though, so I'm gonna do it up.

Not sure who Scribbler is but it seems like it's probably a duo with an inclination toward Neil Young style acoustic folk. The first track, "My Old Lady," is a mournful little number whose guitar moves evoke a back alley vibe before crescendoing into the ether with a nice vocal entrance that keeps it exciting. Second track, "A Girl Should," is even slower and more stark, with the vocalist wailing distantly to very spare acoustic picking. Sort of a less hallucinatory, drunker MV/EE vibe that soon brings in some electric clatter that stomps out a good country rocker with enough lo-fi crud to keep it sounding earthy. Would fit in nicely on Siltbreeze or something, especially when a yalp leads into an ascendant jam that rocks right home.

The second side begins even grimier than the first, as the feedback laden band effort of "Ocean Floor" combines with a singer's stretched vocal capacities to move into some pretty harsh realms. Nice and chaotic, with everyone sounding like they're trying to play guitars about three times too big before they all come back in to ride the riff out. The next track, "A Few Days of Storm," is a brief acoustic jaunt that quickly slips into the truly warped mufflings and odd pipe lines of "Nothing but Pain," taking it all back to some unpleasant home, which is found and entered into on the final distopic moments of fried fuckery that are "Zzzzzz." A nice little 7", they manage to fit a lot in here without losing any sense of identity. Great grade school drawing on the front too. Limited to 300.

Warm Climate - Edible Homes (Stunned Records CS)

Oh man, this latest Stunned batch keeps slaying me over and over. And I know it's been a while since I've been doing blog exclusive reviews (time don't come easy these days...) but sometimes I throw something on and just have to write about it. This is one of those...

I hadn't heard of Warm Climate before, but apparently it's the largely one man project of Seth Kasselman, whose been at it for a good decade or so. Glad I went into this release naively though, because it wasn't what I was expecting at all. I don't know who this Kasselman guy is or where he comes from, but he's the real deal for sure, employing realms too diverse to cover fully without ever losing sight of that disappearing craft, the album.

Side one opens with "Lost Teeth / Organ Donor," and it's a wild one to be sure. Starts off with this twisted, deeply psychedelic pop tune that sounds like David Bowie covering Syd Barrett without any of the poser moves put on by most people who heard Hunky Dory or The Madcap Laughs and couldn't believe it. With Kasselman it's more like he just makes his own version, with strummed guitar and grim background organ accompanying his ridiculously compelling vocal lines. Goes from sweet to twisted on a dime before turning into synth grind for a hot minute that leads into a real groover of a number with bass, drums, the whole bag. Psych blues rocker that holds it down with the best of them.

Most wild about this tape though is that the whole thing turns on a dime at a given moment. After the brief rocker the second track (I'm assuming), "Cave In," has Nick Schutz's clattering drum work riding above a collage of tape loops and murmuring vocals that recalls the psyched out tape explorations of decades past--like some far out "Revolution #9" style thing. After that it's beat city with "Edible Homes & Gardens / Synth Pads for Homeless," with Kasselman tapping into Marc Bolan via 80s synth pop as covered by Burial... really tough to grasp, but goddamn if it isn't a catchy and effective pop number at its core. Closes with further glitched collage excursions into drone caresses.

The second side opens with "Devine Souffle & the Southern Approach," which features a drum pulse over Kasselman's twisting song forms. Highly orchestrated stuff in its own right. You can tell with this material that the guy is far more than just a songwriter with a predilection for weird. This is a smart dude making interesting music, and constructing it from the ground up with vision in hand. Each number here is well played, well placed, well paced and well spaced. The dangerous finger-picked fragility of "Motion Picks Glaze," the closing "Gross Polluter," everything here is amazing and it flows with the arch and timing of something that's the result of real ideas. I know I hype a lot of stuff up here, and songwriters aren't usually my thing, but this is something different entirely. A minor masterpiece--tuck it in there between Skip Spence and Zweistein.

Ophibre - Drone Works for Differing Digital Audio Formats and Encoding Methods (Sentient Recognition Archive CD-R)

And another from Brainwashed. More on the way from Ophibre soon!

Presenting a whopping 24 tracks in just over 45 minutes, this album is exactly what it says it is: a series of drone works the titles of which indicate the digital works' file type, size, bitrate and other pieces of information. If this sounds like a disjointed mess however—and you couldn't be blamed if the quantity and brevity of the material suggested as much—don't be fooled. This is an extended work whose whole is simply attained through the slight differences afforded by so many partitions.

If anything, the suggested chaos of the number of tracks is quelled by Ophibre's distinctly placid sound. The moniker of Benjamin Rossignol, the project represents a study in the subtlest shifting of sound planes. Where much contemporary drone busies itself with overdone dramatics, Rossignol's works often end as they begin as he starts with a set number of sounds and allows them to interact as they will.

In this context, the results far outweigh the specific differences indicated by the track titles. With every track here lasting at or just under two minutes, it seems as though the work was first conceived of as a whole and then, perhaps, broken down and reformatted. While the differences between them seem negligible at first, they do have a way of causing just enough change so as to give the still nature of the work some shape. Thus the work evolves as more of an experiment than a statement, keeping the outcome unforeseen and subtly mobile as the third through sixth tracks drop their sample rates from 128 KBPS gradually down to 32 KBPS. The entire texture changes with it.

The step-wise subtlety of the changes here go hand in hand with the number of tracks then, as each section flows into the next and pushes it along with patient shifts of detail. This approach is markedly more thoughtful and, dare I say, academic than a lot of this type of work, yet it reveals little of the sterility that such approaches often yield. Instead the process behind the work, however intriguing it may be, takes a back seat to the inescapable beauty of the piece itself. Starting as a nearly ambient work, the whole thing slowly dissolves and restructures itself again and again as it goes through its variations, allowing differing portions to themselves as the work progresses.

Essentially what results is a nearly ambient piece, but one whose varying degrees of sample quality create grit that maintain the continuity of the whole through the common source material. When the last track arrives, it is the same exact format of the first one, and its high bitrate and clarity round off a disc whose travels are deeply inward. It is a direction drone could look more often.

Tenniscoats - Temporacha (Room40 CD)

Just published at Brainwashed:

Consisting of only seven spare pieces lasting just over 25 minutes in length, Tenniscoats find themselves having to make a lot out of a little on this disc. That the duo of Saya and Ueno are displaced from their Tokyo home base and immersed in the Amazon rainforest for a series of essentially live recordings seems as though it would leave even less room for error. Yet this distillation results in a poignant intimacy that seeks and finds its own niche in the realm of location-based music interactions.

Most clearly on display here is Tenniscoats' clever and cautious instrumentation, which unfolds the airy and peaceful qualities extrapolated on. "Ichinichi" presents each guitar strum or harmonica breath as its own statement whose presence is in constant contact with the chirping birds surrounding them. The result is an odd musical space that hovers somewhere between the gentle textures of musique concrete and the spatial awareness of Japanese gagaku.

Yet the music is not without motion. Instead of just attempting to interact with their environments throughout here, often it sounds as though they've worked out small scale pop tunes which they must try and fit in between the sounds of their surroundings. "Ninichime" sees a guitar and small organ interacting by a roadside. As the small lines interact in a near tropical breeze, the trucks nearby drift by like waves on a shore. It's a nifty effect, and one that avoids the potentially pallid results it could attain with the strength and conception of the material.

This is crucial, as not all bands could pull this out without it sinking into some sort of folky "live in the forest of life" schlock. But these guys pull it off and then some, and there is a sincerity to these works and their performances that keeps the entire length afloat with small surprises. Special mention on this front must be made of co-conspirator Lawrence English, who recorded and produced the album. His delicate balance of cavernous water dripping among light pattering rhythms and lulling pipes on "Timeless" never lets any sound source take hold on any other.

The following "Do" exhibits Saya's vocal prowess with small, syllabic motives among drifting water, while "Sitting By" features a finger-picked guitar line and clacking pulses among forest birds; the result is one of the most cohesive, poppy pieces here, as Ueno's guitar provides a near soundtrack to the picturesque setting it implies, pushing it to the background before English once more fades it in to let the work slip back towards the wood.

"Hajimari / Owari - Dream Is Refreshing" closes the disc with what is likely the least environmental work here. Rather, the duo's full sound drifts outward as small organ lines, guitar tappings and Saya's lilting vocals draw themselves along with unending beauty. When the organ goes dark and Saya recites spoken words, her voice, like the bird calls around her, speak volumes whether translatable or not.

Blood Money - Blood Brotherhood (Killer Pimp CD)

Here's another one courtesy of the new batch on Brainwashed captain Jon Whitney's Killer Pimp label. This time around it's Jon's own band, Blood Money, whose first release and subsequent live footage slayed. This time around the trio (it also includes Ken Ueno and Tom Worster) enter the studio with their Nord Micro Modular, Roland 808, vocals and, on one track, good ol' fashion geetar in hand. The result is pretty zonked out discourse between noise, metal, industrial and drone that hits the mark right where it needs to. And dig this: produced by Oktopus, who does Dalek's stuff too... wild.

The whole disc starts out with a head-nodding, brain-kneading synth line as the trio ease their way into "Bloodlust," a pretty hearty crevice of dirt infused electronics. Odd vocal babble comes in as the machines continue having their say, grinding and crunching their way into some pretty industrial sinisterizing. The unit has no problem with taking their time here, using the seven minutes beautifully as they grind themselves deeper and deeper into the pavement itself--if they haven't won you over at this point, trust me, it just isn't gonna happen for you. If they have then lucky you, there's over forty more minutes of it! Lucky me.

"Peri" opens with a soft tapping and gentle drone that eases some of the weight of the last one, winding and bending high analog bat cries around Ueno's gutteral vocalizings. A lot of the time these sorts of vocals don't quite pull it off for me in this environment, sounding way too much like some dude trying to sing along to some basement style lurch... I just don't buy it. But Ueno's really something special, displaying a knack for sounds that fall just outside of human tonality. The result is a legitimate blend with the electronics, which means that the interaction is all the more supple and deep for it. Beautiful. And if you needed more Ueno (which you did), you can get it on "Voice Untouched By Conversation," a solo workout that really displays the depth of his instrument.

Elsewhere, Blood Money display their continued wealth of sounds. Whitney's 808 rhythms on "Secret Rapture" drive a cacophonous frenzy of industrial scrape and feedback that bounces along without getting too high off the ground as it always manages to let you know gravity's got its hold pretty well when it slams you back down. "Damascus" might be the gentlest thing presented, with light tinkling and airy, bell-like drones that hover sparsely and gently without ever losing the edge that keeps it afloat in the first place. The following "Showa" continues the drone while managing to present some mid-song warbles that keep it nice and creepy.

As "Black Nature" infers, it is a dark and static grind into the heart of the beast, thick as mud. The closing "Horizon" meanwhile, takes its time as the longest track here as it manages to culminate all of the angles explored thus far into a slow and steady buildup of dense electronic wash and vocal chant. By the end, it moves into an almost psychedelic realm of intersecting lines and harmonious interplay that works wonders. Blood Money's working one of the most original sounds I've heard in a long time, and is something truly experimental in an age when a lot of shit claims that. Truly their own thing, this album sees Blood Money deepening its roots as it moves further down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland. Out March 31st, a good day just made better.

Flower-Corsano Duo - The Four Aims (VHF Records CD)

And another Brainwashed one:

Mick Flower and Chris Corsano are no newcomers to the world of freely improvised music, and their numerous accolades more than summarize their collective achievements. Yet the two musicians play in such a broad spectrum of situations that sometimes it is difficult to tell just what the core of their sound is. On their second full length as a duo however, they are stripped of any external distractions in favor of head-to-head improvisational conversations, a setting that both thrive in.

The album opens with a bang as Corsano's drums and Flower's virtuosic Japan Banjo (or Shaahi Baaja) explode forth for "I, Brute Force?," a propulsive shredding session that finds fertile exploratory ground in the brief gaps allotted by Lightning Bolt levels of energy. Corsano's drumming can rival anyone's, and his playing here is absolutely frenetic, bounding across, over and through Flower's arbeggiated shards with reckless confidence. There are few sounds so unique in improvised music today, and the duo's perfection of this kind of head-on freedom is rarely matched in any circle. Beneath all of the notes—and there are plenty—is an overall shape the form of which unravels with patience and (relative) clarity, but whose moment to moment discourse of ideas is that of a structure far briefer in length.

If the first track represents the duo's forte, the rest of the album displays its depth. Both members' instrumentation extends beyond their usual associations, as Corsano variously picks up a melodica and cello while Flower also plays tanpura and organ. This provides some necessary pockets for the two to extend into and they take full advantage of it. On "The Three Degrees of Temptation," Corsano's pot and pan drum kit rattles, shakes and chimes beneath Flower's nimble string manipulations, creating an eerie and amorphous spatial realm.

This sparse sound is counteracted by the thick duel-string drones on the following track, "The Drifter's Miracles." True to Flower's Vibracathedral Orchestra roots, the number finds the ample dialogue to be had between La Monte Young's drone experiments, contemporary free drone music and Japanese shamisen. Corsano's cello undulates underneath while Flower ornaments his moves with layer after layer of shapes that change effortlessly despite the consistent density of sound.

The duo return to what appears to be their signature sound on "The Beginning of the End," although this time the proceedings maintain a distinctly Skaters-like feel as Corsano's drums patter about beneath Flower's riffage. While the approach may be the same, it's encouraging—though not surprising—that the unit can extend it into different modes through what they're playing rather than how loud or fast they are.

The closing track, "The Main Ingredient," is the longest here, and the duo takes advantage of the length to explore depths previously only hinted at. Building into a frenetic and undulating weight, the unit moves with a singular vision all too rare. Instant response is one thing, but Flower and Corsano can shift mood along with tempo, atmosphere with melody and approach with feel. This sort of elasticity and balance results in some of the most distinctly surprising and exciting sounds happening today. And the long raga-like fade out at the end? It only encourages another go.

Muslimgauze - Sulaymaniyah (Staalplaat CD)

Just in from Brainwashed:

In the seemingly endless discography of Muslimgauze, sometimes it's tough to know where to start or, even worse, where to end. Bryn Jones produced so much music during his sadly shortened life that sifting through it all can feel more like an archival endeavor than a journey into the mind of one of the most impressive and singular electronic musicians of his time. This disc, part of an archive series collecting various shelved projects from Jones, demonstrates simultaneously the depth and the prolific compulsions of the electro-genius.

Actually this disc, in a matter of speaking, has already been released before. Drawn from masters that were later retracted in favor of those that would become 1998's Vampire Of Tehran, this collection is essentially that album with two tracks missing and nine more added. While this may sound like a lot of bonus material—and it is—the album hardly reads like an attempt to squish as much in to one disc as possible even though they're nearing it with almost 70 minutes of music here. Still, Jones' precise concoctions are so stylistically singular that the whole of the disc reads like an album, not a compilation.

Stylistically speaking, Jones sticks with his usual ammo on this release, mixing an ample amount of Arabic source material with breakbeat, electro and dub tactics. The result is a relatively mobile and downright dancey release. Which is not to say that this is poppy in the slightest. If anything, the constraints placed on the music by the clear and propulsive rhythms serve as markers that Jones variously avoids, dabbles over and treads across with samples galore.

Take "Satsuma Tablet" for example. This looping rhythm features no lyrics at all, instead riding along the rhythm with blips and blurts as an Arabesque melodic fragment is repeated into oblivion. On the other hand, the following "Arabs Improved Zpain" features a four-four beat straight out of an NWA track. Underneath, reversed strings and a female vocal dance amongst each other, diverging, interlocking and generally keeping things interesting despite the miniscule amount of material being utilized.

If anything, that may have been Jones' greatest strength. Each track here makes the most out of only a few spare parts—it is the way they are combined, recombined, sampled and treated that shapes the movement. The result is a nearly vertical sonic consideration unheard of in this sort of rhythmic setting. Tracks like "North Africa is Not So Far Away" don't proceed so much as they morph, bending a fragment guitar line, a steady bass groove, a rhythm track and a vocal sample into a dub groove that could last long enough to accompany a Saharan trek.

Other displays of his depth can be seen on tracks like "Straps Sticks of Dynamite Around Her Body," a gentle and moody piece whose intimate Arabic string gestures and spare beat exude just the kind of grim scene that the title suggests without providing answers to its questions. It is this attention to detail and, above all else, the works themselves and what they say that keep nearly all of Muslimgauze's works interesting. This one is no different which is great on the one hand. On the other, it's no different, and could just as easily be lost in the shuffle of the 50 other Muslimgauze albums you've already managed to get your hands on.