This is Communication - S/T (Kimberly Dawn 3" CD-R)

Another tiny disc that packs a wallop from Kim Dawn and their miniature vaults, this one is by one Jeremy Walker, who apparently works mostly in homemade electronics, though you wouldn't guess it from the numbers presented here. Which isn't to say there's not plenty of electro-business to be found, it just serves the purpose of bolstering the pop backbone of Walker's material. These are songs to be sure (and thrilling ones at that) that are surprisingly dense considering their listenability.

Made up of 11 tunes the disc ranging from the lengthy (over seven minutes) opener, a buoyant, almost shoe-gazey go of it that moves from full on forward revelry to slow builds over Townshend style circle strums to the nothing dabbles of the 16 second eighth track. In fact, the whole thing seems to move from impressively conceived tracks that are fully realized to little demonstrations of specific sounds, an intriguing and off kilter organizing principle.

The pop material here is especially vibrant, with track two's electric shards backing a melody that would be right at home on any of a number of Animal Collective/Pavement pawning folks, though Walker's go of it is no rip-off. This is a highly founded voice with a delivery that is as mournful as it is earnest. The electronics go nuts too, somehow managing to never turn the record into an electro-based album. There's never nay question these are pop tunes no matter how overzealous it may get. Even when it all breaks up into straight noise freak out it never loses course, jumping immediately into another pop rock gem on the third number, a mix of Built to Spill guitar thrill and epic lo-fi construction. Pretty amazing really. As the disc begins to break down it gets increasingly abstract, sliding into spare electronic demos that move from one to another with deceptive ease--and somehow the feel remains. The fifth number, for it's 15 or so seconds, sounds like some night life neon soundtrack, as does the sixth, each skipping out right in the middle of itself and losing sight before sliding into the melancholic carnival of the seventh track, the near 80s ballad hints on track eight, the "Toxicity"-style guitar on the ninth, with warbling echoes to boot, and the hollow, new age loomings of track ten. Closes it out with a mini melody that's as feint as air and as hard to find as sugar in tea. And then it cuts out. And that's it. Surely one of the wildest sequences I've heard in a while, but totally successful on all fronts. Crazy one, once you pop you don't stop.

Pyroclastic Pontoon Quintet - S/T (Unverified Records CS)

Now here's a sleeper. Another one from that last Unverified run, this number is apparently the brainchild of the head of Scumbag tapes, though I suspect the quartet claimed to be in tow here has actually been left behind in the riptide quite a ways back. And I only say that because this is some seriously lonely, claustrophobic stuff, an empty little keyboard excursion with blown feedback whispered beneath.

Opening side is as dank and deep as the mysterious cover fetus suggests, like some tiny little worm feeding off some vent 20,000 leagues deep. Never seen a ray of light other than the glow given off by itself when it's after some equally solitary female--that or going in to confuse its microscopic prey, blinding its dinner before absorbing it. Not much happening here at all, but a world of sounds folded in anyway, with slow and steady little warbles of the keys squiggling between the masks of blackness and the feint outlines of hot water currents sliding above the colder, saltier residings of this lowly sea slug. And then it's gone before it even leaves a mark.

Flip side finds total reentry into the same prehistoric spot, the next generation if you will. Like this stuff just keeps going and going through the millenia, unchanging as its so perfectly suited to its function beneath the waves. And we thought we were the best adapted? These dudes just live their little lives over and over, mirrors of one another, from past to present to future to some post-Earth asteroid induced emigration which they'll obviously survive and flourish through anyway. Little fuckers are the definition of time. And eventually, when some big tuna carcass slides past the un-attentive eye of carnivore large and small alike, down into the dark and, one chance in a million, right into their living quarters, the worms join up to indulge, each little key patter furthering their appetite and each little crunch the sound of a million teeth tasting the energy of the distant sun. Ritual moistness, nice and lonesome stuff, totally killer.

Sparkling Wide Pressure - Meaning Plane (Colour Ride CD-R)

Here's one that was sent to me by Frank Baugh (Kim Dawn head, much touted in these parts) on British imprint Colour Ride, more of which was supposed to arrive my way but has yet to. Couldn't wait any longer though to get around to this one, as it's one of the better items I've heard from Frank, which is of course saying something serious.

At five tracks, this might well be Frank's widest reaching excursion yet, at once spaced out and intensely personal. Right from the get-go with this one the sound is different, more intimate or something. Frank's always got a heavy emotion associated with his stuff, but "String" fades in off a wind surfboard, arms out and fingers stretched to deliver a message concerning some encroaching darkness. You're at once heartened this guy showed up and had enough care to do so, but also aware you get active quick before these dudes show up. A dead synth line appears right away, signaling the entry to "Parts," whose various parts garble together like watching some factory chuggings from high above--all business below, but it looks so tiny from this far away. Some guitar wiggles come in while the metronome punctures light holes in the mesh and hollow vocal ohms recede back into the skull. "Bed" gets even deeper in to the nowhere world, opening with this loop that sounds like the opening to that Moby hit or something before calling on some fuzzed synth and organ to urge it off the shallows and into the deep. Slips right along this way, rich and warm as a bath with gentle light modules shimmying across until it lifts itself up, blue droplets shedding off its feathered weight. And what does it get upon arrival you ask? Why, little guitar fragments of diddies long forgotten wedged against the gentle curdling of shredded mouth maneuvers.

"Plane" is, if you can believe it, a real live "song," featuring Baugh's dreary vocal delivery over some coma-inducing geetar before slipping into an ephemeral, glittering space where resonances are heightened and everything shimmers. And among it all lies the caveman, hanging tight and living right. This one grinds itself out for a good stretch too, really stretching its rubbers in the name of ultra drift attitudes. Closing the disc is "Vapor," which reads like a stripped back Cluster number, with crescendoing synth warmth escalating and retreating over small piano melodies, barely there and quite content and warm. This has got to be one of Frank's best yet--it moves through so many zones but still retains a strong sense of unity, perhaps his most assured outlook yet. A must grab if you're into anything that Frank's done yet, or anything at all for that matter.

Historians - Proof (Stunned Records CD-R)

On the one hand, this is a bonus from that last batch of Stunned releases, only available if you got the whole load of em. And continuing on that hand, it's sold out and was limited to 50 in the first place, so it's probably tough to track down. On the other hand, this stuff is so downright grooving that it's got to be given the review treatment pronto, so here goes.

Given, it's actually pretty tough to pin these guys down, let alone tell how many dudes are it at here. Could be one guy making beats, could be a whole band taking it on. Regardless, tracks like the opening "Slice n' Dice" have a singular idea, meshing beat culture with a spaced out, go nowhere attitude that fits as well alongside your Madlib discs as it does next to some Tuluum Shimmering cassette. Definitely danceable, but with a pan flute piddler going at it over the super slushy beat, which crunches under foot as it turns to liquid. "Bomba" is the same deal, pulling Arabesque guitar and rhythms out of some parallel netherworld while some submerged nut spews out faded vocal babblings--nothing quite fits together, an approach done with such assurance that it's tough to deny. "2010 Riot" lays a beat over ripping guitar shred that slowly disconnects itself and drifts into fumbling string moves while a flute loop drops a melodic remnant around over and over. Extremely disorienting but with this beat that keeps it feeling familiar.

Elsewhere, "Chapter Three" explores the noisier side of the group, laying down huge blurts of circuit bent fuzz over the slipping, barely tangible rhythm. I guess it's still for grooving, but you'd have to have dancing shoes made of lead to get down to this sound. "Four (reprise)" has this little early 90s alternative bass line (think the Breeders' "Cannonball") but sends it into some spacey foam that hovers, frowning, in some brightly lit motel room. Weird stuff. And closing it all out of course is "Some Heads Will Rock Others Will Roll." Personally, I think it's more of a head roll-style track, if not a straight up head rolling one... all beats evaporate here in favor of deep strums and clacks that feed off the springs and just keep growing out and up. Thick stuff and a hell of a freebie for those who acquired it. Sure you can snipe it down somewhere though, and well you should.

Christopher Riggs - Smoked Poetry (Middle James Co. CS)

Riggs is all over the place here, I know, but this one got handed off to me at that Graveyards show I mentioned a bit ago and, it being my sonic introduction to (though certainly not cerebral intro...) the Middle James Co. experience, I figured I'd slap it on here for posterity's sake. In the usual Riggs vein this one is, although perhaps even more restless and uneasy, but all under the MJC banner of ultra crude aesthetics and dead to the world production runs. Totally indecipherable cover, as it seems to be with most of these releases, but you do have to appreciate the dude, who happens to be the man behind Fossils, and his apparently devout dedication to his (un)aesthetic.

As for the tunes, these are even more buried and swampy then the usual Riggs fare, with all sorts of shards spewing out from blown out amp rumblings, amounting in a kind of homegrown freak fry that jilts along. Parts of it even remind me, oddly enough, of some Muslimgauze number, sounding more like the hacked up, static induced transmissions from some Arab underground radio outfit spitting its signal out across the Dead Sea. Burned to the ground material that goes on and on, moving between approaches in a second or none, all high-pitch hum here, total bass burnout bumble there. Truly smoked poetry. Slips into a real minimal mode to at one point, bowed notes whispering sweet hostilities through the electric fence, volting its recipient good on the other side but in a pleasant, tingly kind of way. The soothing sounds of stutter worship--they should play this stuff to promote proper head spaces in the work place for sure, especially when the strums start coming in and gliding around each other, like some massively detuned harp plugged into a can opener and played through the metal refractions of the sound waves. Run a saw over it and you get the idea. Second side is much, much shorter, and equally unhurried and wonderous if you let yourself slip in. So let yourself. Killer again, seek it out if you can land a copy--maybe Riggs has a few left over?

Horsehair Everywhere - Nothing Happened (Kimberly Dawn 3" CD-R)

A collabo of sorts between Lee Noble, Patrick Singleton, Samuel Steelman, Geoffrey Sexton and Frank Baugh, this little disc represents yet another go of it from the impressively singular Kimberly Dawn ranks. Theoretically intended as a live soundtrack improvisation, the sounds are wisely left to stand alone, the only hint of visual inspiration coming from the still on the front, which, conveniently, manages to say about as little as a film still could while still providing an idea of the feel that these guys were going for. Like the still, the sounds here are pretty bleak and grinding, though in the consistent and hushed way that the highway traffic is rather than outward grating material.

Considering the number of players present, this little project is about as spare as it gets, incorporating some electronic hum, percussive clatter and distant vocal weirdness into some kind of moist ritual that occurs inside of factory piping deep in the night. Super basement oriented, you can almost hear the wash of light on the participants' faces as the screen projects some seemingly desolate stance. Hollow material that just kind of fumbles along, drifting with rudderless with ease down some precipitous river. Nice to hear dudes laying down any cathartic inkling they may have in favor of dark and done, fried and fearful. Towards the end it heats up a tad, going into some blurred black vortex that splashes about a ways, but this is just the end of the road--you've made it. The whole preliminary feels like it would be just as happy to let you wade through its grime on repeat till the bitter end. And yet, despite its invisible tunnel of crud, it all comes out with more of a stoned out, no-zone than a dank dirge. Nice and softened at the edges, just a big nest of black twine for you to curl up in. Another righteous one.

Mossy Throats - VHS Hallucination (Kimberly Dawn 3" CD-R)

Got a new batch of Kim Dawn recordings in earlier this week, again all of them in the illustrious 3" format. Love that Frank's just going for it with that--such a great layout in my book. Dan Dlugosielski, who's all over the place lately in projects like Uneven Universe, Handicapper Hornz, Body Morph, the EXBX label and that recent collaboration with Xiphiidae, this is Dan at his solo best, combining deeply zoned electronics with an odd, field recording feel. Fried as hell.

The whole thing actually stays fairly tame in the beginning, emerging from some white haze and slipping into hushed forest burnings and chainsaw massacres. It's all eerily subdued though, kept at a steady hum and murmur that makes it all the more unconscious. Not sure what the title is in reference to, but I know he's been working on some VHS pieces lately so it would seem this is an extension of that, taking the whole tape as tape feel and mashing em together till they're buttery smooth and all you get is the product, with a little skin in for variation. Deeply patient and strangely uplifting in a downer kinda way, the thing adds loops of incomprehensibilities over eachother, building a muted color gradient and watching it wash out as oil's poured on top and allowed to drip over.

To some extent this seems like the direction Dan may be headed. A little rounded at the edges, one step removed from the outer bounds of free electronics but still with the same goals in mind. Just a little duller at the corners, numb and dumb. It's a hell of a sound, and one that Dan treats masterfully, at one point sliding out of the loop that's been building and going into some electro-ether for a bit before returning. Tapers off a tad once more though to start something entirely new, with blobs of sticky static flitting around the room while larger waves redirect them to their liking. Totally absorbing and claustrophobic, but with a spatial element that's tops. Another beauty from Kim Dawn for sure.

Niao - Clenched Fist (Sailing CD-R)

There's a funny story to this one. A ways back, as part of a Digitalis package I got this tape that wasn't marked for review, but I dug it enough and tucked it aside. Then, recently, I got an e-mail from this guy George Gukerdas who went to Bard--yours truly's ol' alma mater--and was in some classes with me, and he had some handmades he wanted me to give a go--turns out one of them was that tape though. So he was right ther eunder my nose the whole time. Weirder still, this number was recorded by Anthony Kingsley, who lived my dorm a stretch, and features Gordan Spencer-Blaetz who I go way back with. So yeah, some representation from Annandale here, which is always swell to come by.

As for the sounds here, most of it steers between tribal style hippie jamming and deep space synth work in a pentatonic vein. Opener has some sung syllables from spaced out contributors over a barely there thudding before moving into some loose clatter and chatter. Pretty heady dabblings here, fulfilled further by the following synth zonk out, which reaches deep for some celestial pins but manages to stay nicely aloft in the dark. Vocals return along with drum pulses, I'm assuming from the likes of the aforementioned members and Ben Lorber and Austin Julian, eventually slipping back into the void. Third track starts with some real zonked synth stuff, right up my alley, just oscillators on automatic, before the chanting returns--a major theme it appears. The neo-primitive thing works fairly well here though, if only because of the sincerity of its execution. If you think of the album as a cohesive work rather than a series of songs it gives it a real shape in fact, and some nice personal character. Track five gets pretty spacey with some Animal Collective synth vibes before the closer calls on some "Watermelon Man" rhythms and melds them to cheapo pulses and, again, a fair share of earnest syllabic expounding before drifting into the most head-twisting drift on the disc, with synth runs and slipping percussion blowing all about. Nice little disc, especially for those folks into the free-folk/early Pocahaunted realm of the spectrum. Comes in a lovingly crafted handsewn case too. Can't argue with that.

Christopher Riggs - Amazed Nova (Unverified Records CS)

Here's one I've been sitting on way too long. Chris gave this one to me months ago, but it wasn't officially available so I figured I'd wait till it was. Well it finally got the mass publication treatment and boy is it deserving. Been jamming this one for months and it's still got some seriously demented vibes.

Actually I got a chance to chat with the man himself about this number back at the Graveyards show and he dropped some bombs on me about the title, which is actually an anagram for someone--namely one Ava Mendoza--who never got back to Chris about something in some random and ultimately unimportant e-mail. Revenge is sweet, and Chris' wrath is heartily felt, though he made sure to expound on this being between the two of us and the internets. So here, internets. And thanks Ava, for the killer title.

The tape itself is one of Riggs' most sickly offerings, presenting on the front half a sort of warbbling sea shanty that sounds like sickly little cretaceans, their scrawny bones weak from malnourishment, dragging their way across the sea floor in search of cud. Turns grizzly too as they enter the oil fields, slick as hell, and they have to go zig zagging terrified through it--needless to say many are left behind. No one can make their axe sound less like a guitar than Riggs, but when a sax/some reeded instrument comes in over the thud of amps on the floor and metallic clink it almost turns into a straight up free jazz blowout for a second. Old tactics meshed for new, ultra weirdo approaches. Rusty seesaws mounted by albatrosses in heat.

Flip side starts off with some string boinging that oddly enough sounds kinda like a kitchen sink version of that Skaters tape start sound that lies all over those Monopoly Child discs. Plenty of space here, with the white sound of the room giving a hushed sense to it, like this is actually some field recording mic picking up on the sounds of some manic flea orgy. Hell, it's almost cute. Everything flits about while little sounds get added atop, creating a rubber band orchestra. Strangely accesible in its own way despite the utter incomprehensibility of it. Almost seems like it might be the alternative soundtrack to some alien planet's world peace day dance party. Or maybe it's just what happens when you put metal coils in the microwave and try and turn them into popcorn. Careful though, those thigns are not edible. No matter how fucking tasty they look. Killer, one of Riggs best and actually a really good starting point as it's some of his most relentlessly active stuff. Wild all the way.

Analog Concept - Listen Already Today to the Music of the Past! (Stunned Records CD-R)

Just in from Brainwashed:

It may not be an earth-shattering concept to go analog, but this is not your average take on the idea either. Presenting one nearly hour-long track, there is plenty of room here for this Russian artist to sprawl out and develop ideas, but Alexey, the project's sole protagonist, seems to feel little need for sticking to anything, instead bobbing around from idea to idea with fluid and exciting ease. Pulling from as many realms as he can and synthesizing them into one bombastic go of it this is, as the title enthusiastically suggests, timeless stuff that could just as well be some odd Soviet new-wave experimental excursion as it could be the basis of future beat culture worldwide. If only...

If an hour-long track of analog beats and drifting electronics sounds a bit heavy-handed, fear not. This is as light and warm as it gets, with Alexey's instrumentation guiding the way between miniatures, each of which explores a new incantation of the musician's sound. Some of them are pure rave drift, with little ticking beats tickling the underbellies of vast stretches of electronic tone; others take a more spaced out stance, pointing their eye out toward the nebulae and watching it drift apart while marbles crash underfoot. Each one drifts in and out as effortlessly as the next, some lasting longer but none exceeding their desired timetable.

As with so many of the smaller run labels today, Stunned's limited pressings have allowed the album maximum conceptual freedom. These could easily be broken into tracks (of which their would be many) and sequenced as sketches, but the coagulation of the ideas into a single long take means gives the whole a much more weighty feeling removed from the brevity of the numbers individually. Rapid fire drum machine numbers with laser beam stutters rest alongside brooding drone nod-offs, but the necessity of experiencing one before the other provides real shape to the output.

With so many ideas packed into it though, it's a wonder the album maintains the cohesion it does. This never sounds divided, no matter how many areas are drawn from, and even the stoned out white hum of one part, whose only accompaniment is aimless squiggling above, feels as if it is arriving from the same voice as the strictly beat oriented tracks. Much of the material sounds more like early synthesizer experiments, with single staccato runs going ad infinitum, but these give a retro sterility that efectively clears the air for lush drone pieces that sound as if they could go be drawn out for, well, the entire album.

To some extent, the disc's most valuable asset is its ability to sound entirely removed from any context; it appears as a truly outsider work despite the clear reference points of its practitioner, which include everyone from Gordon Mumma to Asmus Tietchens to Aphex Twin. Still, it seems Alexey's most important influences lie far below the public radar, lying under the Russian streets in continual drift.

This is what keeps the music as exciting as it does. It is wisely constructed but also one step removed from that which it initially appears as: an infinitely rich take on synthesizer music that reveals more with every listen. Each detail is as unexpected and inconspicuous as the next, giving it a life far beyond many more consciously connected to these areas of musical output.