December 2011
9 posts
Photo: MYSELF AND BEN VIDA AT NOWNOW…. http://t.co/5yF66Wm4
RT @rarefrequency: Pimmon “Archangel in Reverse” video via @foxydigitalis http://t.co/60qYGobG LOVE THIS VIDEO!!!!
new anonymeye video goes live at mess and noise - http://t.co/SPem8WJ5
Photo: HOBART IN JANUARY http://t.co/OWSuSmQx
Video: THIS IS YOUR GOLD WATCH, IN VIDEO http://t.co/GMDktBGW
fyi, all those peregrine delux packs are gone….
The Necks - Mindset (ReR)
Two shorter excursions, a reference to format perhaps as this also appears on wax. Rum Jungle is a thicket of activity. Buck’s drums commandeer the piece, layering and building into an imposing and forceful wall of cymbals, shakers and skins. Abrahams is like an underground stream, craving its way with subterranean stealth, whilst Swanton pulses away without hesitation.
Daylight, is a...
Fennesz / Sakamoto - Flumina (Touch)
Graceful seems the most apt adjective for this recurring meeting. Each artist is engaged in a sound choreography – a movement of sound objects – tonal, rhythmic and textural within a darkened stage.
Light chorus effects gloss over Sakamoto’s piano, creating a watery nausea that is oddly pleasurable. Fennesz lifts and submerges these passages through clouds of unfamiliar sources. It’s as if you...
Francisco Lopez - Untitled #275 (Unsound)
The untitled series grow. A new palette appears, the emergence of an instrumentalist in Lopez’s repertoire, a curious and welcome variation. Reiner Van Houdt activates the piano like a groaning, clunking mechanical beast in Movement One. A crude, and brutish pulse of hammers and keys – a piano reduced to its most simple mechanical capacity.
Movement Two traverses into a wholly more beautiful...
July 2011
1 post
WASHED OUT - WITHIN AND WITHOUT (SUBPOP)
Oh how expectations can be denied! It’s a cruel situation - anticipation of music is a rare thing in this day and age and Washed Out’s EPs showed such promise. Here , half washed out sounds and uncomfortably unresolved melodic passages plonk alongside one dimensional drum patterns. The big issue is in the lack of ‘washing out’…that simple lo-fI saturation is gone.
If...
June 2011
2 posts
Oren Ambarchi + Jim O’Rourke – Indeed (eMego)
Indeed.
It’s a fitting title for this exotic electro acoustic passage. Rather than coy courting, our hosts depart quickly into a consuming explosion of synth and guitar led improvisations. Crafted live and no doubt edited to create a more composed sensibility, the more musical side of these two sonic explorers is brought forth on Indeed.
Flowing cascades of tuned percussion bubble behind sheets...
JIM O'ROURKE - OLD NEWS VOL 5
What’s the pleasure in Old News?
Old News is still fresh to the ears, a timely reminder of the timelessness of worthwhile music. O’Rourke’s sense of directed play is elegantly considered without being cumbersome. The synthi is a pleasure to behold in his hands – swinging from visceral stabs to more achingly melodious shifts.
Pedal to Pedal summurises this best – a genuinely melodic...
April 2011
1 post
GROUPER - A I A
I think I had a dream. It was like looking out into a canyon slowly filling with mist. I could hear echoes, and textures floating out of the cloud – none of them were clear, but they traced and eventually filled the space with a kind of uneasy calm.
Alien Observer - lingering washes of sound, blooming melodies and a deepening sense of space as the pieces descend. Always going deeper. Dream Loss...
March 2011
3 posts
Zeitkratzer – James Tenney (Old School)
Swells. Epic swells. Like an ocean. A harmonic ocean, seething with clusters of sound that emerge, crest and diminish in a hypnotic, lulling motion. Tenney revisited and re-imagined by Zeitkratzer. Three works, paced and lacking urgency. Harmonium #2 broods with a growing unrequited tension. A set of arcs overlapping, mixing and evaporating across one another. Tension, ever growing tension – as...
Mountains – Air Museum (Thrill Jockey)
Mountains, once distant now closer to the ear. Former scarcity and openness is absent. In their place comes ‘January 17’, seemingly a day of warm organ tones, swirling synth and audio bric-a-brac that tumbles into the sound space giving way to the pulsing bursts of ‘Thousand Square’. Mountains traverse further into this world of pulse and filtering, ‘Blue Lanterns On East Oxford’ hypnotic with...
April 2010
2 posts
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal (E.Mego)
The opening tortured intensity of ‘Nil Admirari’, belies the actual considered flow of OPN’s latest arpeggiated epic. Like all of OPN’s work to date this record is about the charting clusters of sound waves before and after a storm. There’s never true drama in OPN’s music, rather a deep examination of the detail and cycles that are often exploded into something more overstated. The title track...
Barefoot Gen (Madman)
Finally a chance to witness the anime of this Manga masterpiece. Barefoot Gen, the story of Hiroshima a-bomb blast as witnessed by author Keiji Nakazawa, is as powerful now as it was when first released in 1983. A deeply human tale Barefoot Gen that speaks to the complexity of the human condition and the resolve uncovered in moments of profound hardship.
The scene following the bombing is...
February 2010
1 post
Washed Out – Life Of Leisure
Washed Out – Life Of Leisure EP (Mexican Summer)
Ernest Greene makes me excited about song! Washed Out, his hazily melodic project brings to mind a Polaroid shot in summer sometime during the 80s. This isn’t a comment on the musical character as such, more so about the sensibility of the work. Soft, slightly blurred edges and saturated compressed grooves unfold with clusters of vocals soaring...
January 2010
2 posts
Robert Curgenven – Oltre
Robert Curgenven – Oltre (Line)
Australian sound artist Rob Curgenven has for too long gone largely unpublished. With a plethora of performance and residency projects under his belt, his catalogue of recordings is comparatively slim.
It’s for this reason Oltre is worthy of close examination. Working largely with self resonating dubplates (akin to some of Christian Marclay’s performance...
Stephan Mathieu - 10 Minutes
Stephan Mathieu - 10 Minutes (Touch)
A new port of entry to the Touch catalog appears, opened by Stephan Mathieu – miniature audio-visual works for iphone/ipod.
These 10 delicate pieces comprised of short video works with ornate soundtracks are perfectly captivating – casual yet engaging enough to call for instant r…epeated viewing. One can’t help but feel the editing could have been...