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Music

From Here We Go Sublime

There’s really nothing special about this record, except for the fact that it’s stunningly good. In itself, that’s quite daring these days.

If you’re making electronic music, it seems you need a manifesto of sorts. The whole scene is fractured into more subgenres than anyone could track, each with its own set of rules and practices.

Take the early glitch-hop work of Prefuse 73, the micromanaged chaos of Autechre, or the gliding layers of guitar loops in Fennesz. An artist is known for their techniques as much as they are their sound. The whole thing is an unremitting, steely-eyed march forward, sometimes at the expense of making music that’s simply enjoyable on a basic level.

You can’t get away with just making good music; you’ve got to be doing something revolutionary. And sometimes that gets just a bit tiring.

Music

One step sideways: review of Quaristice

The new Autechre record has been released a month ahead of time for download. This is a strange tactic for Warp. After all, Autechre doesn’t need the buzz. They’ve got a built-in fanbase who will likely buy the record no matter what.

Precedent shows that Booth and Brown are somewhat averse to having their material leaked beforehand, and this may be a way of cutting that off before it starts. Before Draft 7.30 was released, someone was distributing “bootleg” advance copies which were, in fact, completely fake.

If it’s not early promotion, and it’s not a means to circumvent leaks, why release the record early? It could be that Warp (or the artists) lack confidence in it.

It’s a harsh judgment, but Autechre have not only released some truly great music, they’ve rewritten a great many of the rules along the way. It’s rare for an artist to become an influence within their own career, and rarer still for them to avoid treading the same ground twice.

Music

More silliness from the RIAA

Motley Fool is advising investors away from putting their money into record companies. Why?

Because, in the words of David Boies, “an industry at war with its consumers is an industry in trouble.” In the case of Jeffrey Howell, they’re prosecuting someone not solely for file-sharing, but also for copies of legally purchased CD’s on his computer.

Music

In Rainbows

There’s been alot of attention paid to this one. Not because it’s a Radiohead record, nor for its content, but for the manner in which it’s been released.

See, you can download it for free. No subscription is required, and the songs are in unprotected MP3. What’s more, the band wants you to download it. Pay whatever you feel is fair.

This is a big move, and one I’ve seen coming for some time now. Leave it to Radiohead to pull it off first.

Music

Radiant Flutter

Ah, the analogue cassette tape. Those little plastic beasties were the medium for countless adolescent epiphanies, and they were an endless source of frustration in my adult years in the music business. Holding one of these in my hand now, I see a fragile, tempermental and inefficient medium that’s better off dead. My teenage years were a different story.

In high school, everyone traded tapes. Sure, vinyl was nice, but the tape had two distinct advantages: it was portable, and you could record on it. Both these factors lent it great power. I grew up in the Walkman generation, and though it’s commonplace to see middle-aged types walking down the street with those white Apple buds in their ears these days, shutting out the world with headphones was something rebellious in my day.

Music

T-Station January Mix

I’ve got a new mix compiled for the T-Board January trade. The theme was alternating male/female vocalists, and I was in a bit of a mood for what we called “college rock” in my day.

If you’d like a copy, let me know. These are on MiniDisc, so naturally, you’ll need a player that accepts them.

Music

Max Richter: Songs from Before

“When Thomas brought the news that the house I was born in no longer exists – neither the name, nor the park sloping to the river, nothing – I had a dream of return. Multicoloured. Joyous. I was able to fly. And the trees were even higher than in childhood, because they had been growing during all the years since they had been cut down.”

Music

Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet

If there’s one thing Tim Hecker has mastered, it’s consistency. He’s been mining the same formula for four albums now, and although they may seem very similar on the surface, closer attention reveals a certain glacial progress.

Hecker’s sound is similar to what I’d expect if Kevin Shields collaborated with the Hafler Trio. It’s a dense, swirling buzz of feedback, static and distant shortwave effluvia organized into something resembling music. At first, it seems random and homogenous, but listen deeper and you’ll find a wealth of carefully wrought detail. The washes of tempered noise and obfuscation hide the fact that all the underlying elements are carefully arranged and structured. This isn’t ambient music in that it demands close listening and scrutiny to resolve the fine details.

Music

November T-Station Mix

This month’s theme was “soundtracks.” Finally, a chance to put Ennio Morricone and Yoko Kanno on one disc!

If you’d like a copy, let me know.

Music

Clark: Body Riddle

This one came in under the radar for me. In the initial announcement from Warp, it was somewhere in the middle of the list, and since it wasn’t immediately identified as the new Chris Clark record (apparently he’s just going by his surname now), I didn’t take notice.

The lack of a huge promotional push could be interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm for the record, and the initial reviews were a bit lackluster, claiming the record was somewhat dull and monochromatic.

On first listen, I was inclined to agree. There’s nothing here approaching the hell-on-wheels ecstacy of the first album (“Proper Lofi” and “Diesel Raven” were absolutely exhilirating, even if the record had some real mis-steps), nor does it have the restless surrealism that made Empty the Bones of You so compelling.

In fact, the record starts on a very sedate note with “Herr Bar,” loping along to a typical sullen-but-woozy Chris Clark melody but featuring little in the way of development.

Music

Loudness Wars, continued.

This happy little nugget is from the new Tool record. A friend bought me a copy for my birthday, and I have to say, it’s quite good. Listening to it through headphones, I noticed the drums (Danny Carey is a wonderful drummer, BTW) sounded “mushy,” particularly the snare. The decay on the cymbals was muted as well.

I went ahead and ripped it, which was no small feat, since the CD is copy-protected. Thank goodness for Linux and cdparanoia. My hatred for copy-protection is a whole other topic, but I did think these CD’s were supposed to me marked in some way…

Anyhow, the above snipped (click image for detail) is the waveform from “Vicarious.” Smashy, smashy! Not only is the whole thing hard-limited at -1.7db (the slight artificial headroom at the top margin), but it still clips. Peak levels for a good recording should be around -9db.

The ReplayGain value is an indication of how many decibels the track would have to be reduced by to fit an 89db industry standard, in this case 8.5.

Music

Kraftwerk, die fruhen Jahre.

As far as most people know, 1974’s Autobahn was Kraftwerk’s first album. It’s certainly the one that solidified their image and sound, and as far as the band is concerned, it’s supposed to be their first record.

The truth is something different and far more interesting, however.

Autobahn was actually their fourth album. In fact, the band had been recording since 1970, going through a couple of lineup changes and honing their sound. Autobahn saw them settling on their now-familiar sound, which was largely dominated by computerized instrumentation and robotic vocals. The music was simple and repetitive, but somewhat melodic and catchy. It was certainly ahead of its time, and their influence on modern electronic music (and popular music in general) is still obvious to this day.

But the first three records were something altogether different. The band refuses to acknowledge their existence, and they’ve been out of print for almost 25 years.

Music

Keith Fullerton Whitman: Lisbon

In the last half of the 20th century, it took alot of nerve for composers in academic circles to write tonal, listenable music.

In the “serious” music world, if you wanted to be taken seriously, your work had to be an impenetrable, dissonant intellectual piece of unplayable wankery. I know; I was there. I spent countless hours poring over Carter’s byzantine (and IMO, pointless) complexity, all the while wondering if anyone actually enjoyed this stuff.

I was an outcast for writing stuff that actually had recognizable harmonic structure. I was also the only guy in the department who didn’t have a scraggly beard. I think those two things might have been related.

Guys like Walter Piston were writing tonal and emotional music, but were often viewed as reactionaries in their own time. Piston, of course, wrote one of the cornerstone textbooks on orchestration, and his work, though a bit on the spiky side to a newcomer, carried more imagination, wit and emotion than a conservatory of elitist serialists could ever hope to muster.

Music

Goldmund: Corduroy Road

I’m not sure where to start on this one. Goldmund is the alter-ego of Keith Kenniff, a Boston-based musician who’s done some superb electronic work for Type over the last couple of years. I ordered this sight-unseen, and although I expected something different, this took me completely by surprise.

Kenniff’s discarded all his computerized trappings in favor of an album of mostly solo piano. There are thirteen short tracks, unified by the influence of American Civil-War music. It’s an odd, elegaic and beautiful record, and certainly the last thing I expected.

I’m not sure what to compare it to. “Ba” opens with a skeletal melody floating over an ostinato, sounding something like Chris Clark’s “Pleen 1930s” or some of Richard James’ work on the much-lamented Drukqs. At other times, the sparse, quiet pieces like “Marching through Georgia” are remniscient of A Silver Mt. Zion or Robin Holcomb’s wonderful Little Three.

Kenniff keeps the microphones closely placed, and you can hear his fingers tapping the keys and the hammers striking the strings.

Music

Terry Riley: Cadenza on the Night Plain

Well, it’s about damn time. This is a classic recording that’s been out of print for almost ten years. I lost mine awhile back and regretted it ever since. The good folks at Ryko have finally acquired the rights and reissued it with an excellent remastering job.

I’ve always been somewhat ambivalent in my feelings toward the Kronos Quartet. On one hand, I’m grateful for the job they’ve done exposing the public to new and challenging repetoire, and they approach their work with a great deal of skill and enthusiasm.

On the other hand, their enthusiasm sometimes gets the best of them. Note that they rip through Philip Glass’ Company at such a clip that nothing’s given a chance to resonate and brood the way it’s supposed to. They have a tendency to mic everything very close, and at times it causes them to sound strained and raspy, particularly on the Early Music.

Audio Technology Music

Resonance and Diffraction

Sound waves are delicate and fragile things. They need a medium simply to exist at all, and any variations or interference in the ether can change their whole character.

Ever since 33.3 LPs started coming out in stereo, we’ve had an obsession with recording accurate sound. You can spend anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of million dollars setting up just the right acoustic space, you can position the baffles and mics just so, isolate and eliminate residual hum…you name it, just to get the exact right sound on tape (or these days, disk).

Some folks are just obsessive, and they don’t realize one simple truth: real life is noisy, hissy and generally out-of-tune. You can get it all perfect, down to the last detail, but know what? 99.98794% of the general population is going to listen to it on sub-par equipment anyhow.

Picture your masterwork being dumped to a TDK AD60 and crammed in the tape-deck of an ’85 Fiero with a 10-watt system as the owner barrels down a gravel road.

Confield

The general sonic palette is definitely softer than LP5 and alot closer to the feel of Chiastic Slide, which is definitely a good thing. The rhythms are much quicker and more hectic, even if the actual tempo of most of the tracks is very slow. That spinning-bottle noise they used on “Krib” from Cichlisuite seems to be a regular part of their vocabulary now.

“Vi Scose Poise” opens with what sounds like Sonata #1 for glass bottle and spinning cap, which gradually coalesces into a rythm of paradiddles that skip all over the place between speakers. I have to wonder how many tracks it took just to record the backing track. The melody enters, sounding like something off Incunabula, even though I’m reminded more of “Pir” from Ep7.“Cfern” chugs along in 6/8 and even swings a bit, throwing in some wooden mallet instruments and Hammond organ. “Pen Expers” took me off guard, opening with what sounds like a malfunctioning Roland Dr.

Draft 7.30

Confield stands in retrospect as one Autechre’s best records. It’s certainly not their most widely beloved or even accepted album, but it represents an important step in that it clears the slate for their entire catalog.I suppose it was about time. They’ve become an influence not just in their own lifetime, but in less than a decade after starting out. In almost every new electronic record I hear, I can spot their fingerprints somewhere. For all the praise given to Richard James, it’s clear that Autechre has had the greatest effect in steering the electronic scene toward what it is today. The influence is etched into the very landscape, so subtle and pervasive that it’s often not even noticed, but taken for granted as the way things just sound. The whole “glitch” genre practically sprouted from the debris of Lp5 and Ep7, and you can hear their methods echoed in just about any act I can think of, from Boards of Canada to Dntel or L’usine.

Music

Resonant Hum

New mix up at AOTM. As always, if you’re interested in a copy, let me know. And, no, don’t ask how I got the Boards of Canada this early.

1) Broken Social Scene: KC Accidental

2) Menomena: The Late Great Libido

3) Architecture in Helsinki: Maybe You Can Owe Me

4) Sufjan Stevens: All Good Naysayers, Speak Up!

5) Butterfly Child: Young Virgins Cry for Mutiny

6) Books: There Is No There

7) Bark Psychosis: 400 Winters

8) Prefuse 73/The Books: Pagina Ocho

9) Boards of Canada: Dayvan Cowboy

10) Explosions in the Sky: Your Hand in Mine

11) Tarentel: For Carl Sagan

12) Yo La Tengo: The Sea Horse

Music

Polygon_Cities by Monolake

If I had to pick an act that serves as the apotheosis of Basic Channel records, it would be Monolake. Like the rest of the roster, Robert Henke (and a revolving crew of collaborators) specialize in German minimalist techno. Sure, there’s a ton of that stuff out there, and most of it is downright embarrasing, but the guys on Basic Channel tend to push it into more interesting directions, if only in subtle ways.

Previous albums had ranged from Musique Concrete or dub experiments, but over the last few records, he’s been pushing in a more rhythmic direction, culminating in 2003’s excellent Momentum. The general mood is dark and metallic, and very sterile. This is music for airport runways at night or dark subway tunnels. There’s very little melody, and samples are used sparingly if at all, and are often so obfuscated as to be unrecognizable.

Polygon_Cities doesn’t push the envelope so much as strain at the edges a bit.

Music

Swelter

New mix up at AOTM. Let me know if you’re interested in a copy.

Swelter

Tim Hecker: Song of the Highwire Shrimper
Twerk: From Green to Brown
Aphex Twin: Jynweythek
Tortoise: Tjed (John McEntire Remix)
Mouse on Mars: Flim
Bola: Sirasancerre
Epoq: For the Ears of the Stars
Sybarite: Ashs
Alog: The Youth of Mysterious Conversations
Keith Whitman: Stereo Music for Disklavier, Electric Guitar and Computer
Thomas Fehlmann: Luftikuss
Lusine Icl: Drip
Yasume: Slowly, Clearly and Calmly
Shuttle358: Scrapbook

Music

Chessa by Shuttle358

12k is one of those rare labels that manages to stay in business despite the fact that they fly completely under commercial radar and that they’ve been quietly hosting some of the best electronic music out there for a couple of years now. I stumbled across their roster purely by accident, and come to think of it, I’ve never heard a whisper about them from the mainstream press. Many of their artists cross-pollinate with German minimalist label Mille Plateaux, and there’s a shared style between the two labels, but where Mille Plateaux tends to trade in dry academics, 12k works from a more organic and emotional template.

Shuttle358 is the alter-ego of Dan Abrams, who had a track under his own name on the second Clicks & Cuts compilation. Like his labelmates, he makes very quiet, minimalistic stuff. If you’ve heard Sogar, Vladislav Delay or Pan Sonic, it’s in that vein.

Music

Great records of 2004

Last year was an odd one for music. Politics reared its ugly head during an election year, and musicians, who we all know are the real experts on foreign policy, seemed to come out of the woodwork to denounce “the war,” falling back on rehearsed soundbites and incoherent vitriol. The whole thing was made all the more disappointing by the fact that there simply wasn’t anything very good coming out from the major labels. U2 did an okay record with a ponderous title, but it traded mostly on nostalgia, and it appears that R.E.M. is just a hollow shell of its former self without Bill Berry.

As usual, there was some truly great work done this year, but it flew under the commercial radar. Thankfully, Emo appears to be dead, and we’ve finally seen the end of “Post-Rock” as the new Prog. Acts like Tortoise treaded water, while others redefined themselves and came out all the better for it.

Music

Listen with Xela

Well, this came out of nowhere. It’s a mix cobbled together by John Xela for Boomkat, and apparently it’s an exclusive because I’ve heard absolutely nothing about it elsewhere. I went ahead and got it on a lark, and it’s pretty darn good.

For music geeks, the mix-tape (which I shall call it, regardless of medium) takes on a certain aura of history and reverence. Chances are, most of us have had a life-defining moment based on something somebody’s cooler older brother or sister put on a tape for us…something that we’d never have been exposed to otherwise. For me, it was the first time I heard “Debaser” on a tape that a high-school friend’s sister’s boyfriend had given her. I was a freshman in a redneck Georgia school, where all the local radio stations played a constant litany of country and “Classic Rock,” so the dichotomy between Francis’ hideous wailing and the sheer catchiness of the chorus was something altogether alien and liberating.

Music

Codename: Dustsucker by Bark Psychosis

Man, it’s been awhile. Hex came out in, what, 1993 or so? What gives? Graham Sutton gets some friends together, records a modest record which receives almost no promotion but invents the whole “Post-Rock” genre, then he just disappears for eleven years? Hm.

If you’ve never heard Hex, kick yourself now. When your posterior regains feeling, get a copy. You won’t be sorry. It was (and still is) one of the true masterpieces of the 1990’s, easily ranking along with records like Loveless and the first Low record in terms of sheer originality. It’s a slow, sparse and almost hopelessly melancholy record that exists in its own private universe, with nary a trace of any outside influence. One critic, not knowing how to pigeonhole it, coined the term “Post-Rock” to refer to it, and the name stuck, but after touring for a bit, Bark Psychosis just seemed to dissipate. Sutton went off to work on a drum-and-bass project called Boymerang, and that was seemingly it.

Music

Faking the Books by Lali Puna

Lali Puna have always come across to me as more of a “concept” act than anything else. After hearing the rabid, foaming fanyboyish praise that got heaped on Scary World Theory, I was completely dumbfounded. The whole thing came off as a premeditated Stereolab-meets-Notwist experiment, with little of the latter’s subtle power and far too much of the former’s fey smugness. I wrote it off as by-the-numbers Post-Rock and forgot about them.

Needless to say, I had no expectations for this record, but on impulse, I decided to check it out. Glad I did. Faking the Books drops the coyness and Tinkertoy aesthetics in favor of something more straightforward and much more successful.

The opening track could have been lifted straight out of the Notwist catalog, even though it’s got a character all its own. Valerie Trebeljahr has a pensive, almost exhausted-sounding voice, and when she sings, “everybody knows/this ain’t heaven,” she evokes the type of elegaic feel that fills Notwist’s best work.

Music

Lilies by Arovane

Uwe Zahn likes to take his time between records. It’s been five years since the release of his debut Atol Scrap, and two since its masterful followup Tides. Atol Scrap wasn’t the best or most distinctive record of its time, but it was pleasant enough, and although it was a bit lacking in character, the underlying craftsmanship of the arrangements was commendable. In the end, though, it was just another airless IDM record with angular structures. This isn’t to say it’s not worth a listen; it’s just that it didn’t have much to distinguish it from the rest of the pack.

For his second album, Zahn paired with Christian Kleine for Tides, which was something of a revelation. Kleine supplied several guitar figures, which Zahn arranged into a haunting and programmatic meditation on the French seashore. Tides was by turns beautiful and dramatic, all the while managing to neatly sidestep the New Age pitfalls of such a project.

Music

Twerk: Living Vicariously through Burnt Bread

German electronic label Mille Plateaux has always been a hit-or-miss affair with me. They specialize in very minimal music, best exemplified through the archetypal Clicks & Cuts series, in which the barest of sounds and glitches serve as building blocks for their artists’ work. Sometimes, it works wonderfully and sometimes, it’s just too dry and insubstantial. The best artists (Kit Clayton, Vladislav Delay) take these simple elements and build something shimmering and immersive, but too many others just lack the imagination.

Twerk is the alias of Shawn Hatfield, who uses found sounds and field-recordings to build music that’s surprisingly tangible given its ephermal foundations. He’s also a programmer who writes much of the software he uses for composition, but the process itself is thankfully a means and not an end. There’s nothing about this record that suggests an agenda, and it’s easily enjoyed on purely musical merits.

This is a very vibrant and organic record, sounding at times like Microstoria with a bit of air let in.

Music

:zovietfrance: The Decriminalisation of Country Music*

Some great records just slip through the cracks. It can happen for any number of reasons, but the most common comes down to marketing, or the lack thereof. Often, labels blanch at something that can’t be easily categorized and targeted at a specific audience, and as a result, the music ends up on an excruciatingly limited press-run, or it gets delegated to a tiny label with little or no distribution reach.

Other times, it’s the fault of the artist, who for one reason or another, chooses to release a record in relative obscurity. Gescom and alot of the other folks on Skam are notorious for this, and the side-effect (intentional or not) is that these records become immensely valuable in their scarcity.

Common sense would dictate that if they were the least bit proud of their work, then the artist would seek wider distribution for it, but that’s not always the case.

Music

Records that made the world a better place in 2003

Fourtet: Rounds

(Reviewed here) In which Hebden refines and outstrips Pause to make an electronic record that actually breathes. I catch something new every time I listen to it. His best work yet.

Xela: For Frosty Mornings…

A modest and wistful album that matches is title. Subtle and evocative; the equivalent of watching frost etch its way across a windowpane.

Postal Service: Give Up

A continuation of last year’s Benjamin Gibbard/Dntel collaboration. Some of the catchiest stuff you’ll hear this year. Good enough that the few glaring mis-steps (read the lyrics to “Nothing Better”) can be easily overlooked.

Notwist: Neon Golden (US version)

A record which channels everything from vintage New Order to Wire without missing a beat. “Pilot” is one of the best singles this year and comes off (strangely enough) as a post-rock successor to REM’s “Driver 8.”

Yasume: Where We’re from the Birds Sing a Pretty Song

Xela side project using source material from the “Twin Peaks” soundtrack.

Music

Ashleigh and the Decline of Western Civilization

Stu dropped me an email that really got me thinking. Interestingly enough, it’s about my resent-and-bile filled review of the last Sasha album. I get alot of mail about that, sometimes more than all the other content on the site. Anyhow, on to Stu’s letter:

“While my subject line may tip you off concerning my intentions of this
email, may I say that while I don’t agree with your review of
Airdrawndagger, I still feel it is an excellent review. Your breadth of
knowledge concerning Electronica’s roots are very apparent. You mentioned
the transgendered Wendy Carlos and the decidedly non-techno Mouse on Mars.
Most of the ‘fans’ of electronic music view it as a fad, and are guilty
of not knowing electronica’s roots. People in the Punk scene know their
roots. People in the hip hop vein know their roots. Why can’t more fans
do their homework like you? (don’t answer that)”

Okay, Rule #1:Never ask me a question and append “don’t answer that.”

Music

Keith Fullerton Whitman & Tim Hecker

Frank Zappa once said that a musically-minded person could walk into a factory and hear rhythm everywhere. What some people consider noise, others consider music (and the opposite is often true as well!). One man’s air conditioner drone is another’s trance-inducing harmony. I can attest to this, as I spent some time in high school recording train whistles and various automobile horns with the intent of analyzing their intervals.

Incidentally, the horn of a 1982 Subaru is a minor third-D and F.

Both of these composers strike me as like-minded folks, the kind of people who are as fascinated by mundane sound as I am.

Playthroughs is a startling record. It consists of drones and sustained tone clusters, and that’s about it. What makes the record so incredible is just how much Whitman can do with so little. The record opens with “Track3a,” which comprises two sine waves spaced a major second apart.

Music

Life is Full of Possibilities by Dntel

In many ways, this record seems inevitable. It’s as if all the right influences were gathered at once and coalesced into one fifty-minute stretch. You could compare this to alot of things, but what really makes it so incredible is the fact that it takes its influences and molds them into something very new and very memorable.

“Umbrella” starts the album off very similar to the way Radiohead started Kid A off with “Everything in Its Right Place,” slow majestic and building, but never quite peaking out. Chris Gunst tentatively sings evocatave lyrics, which are at first heavily distorted, but with each verse, the strings swell ala Bjork and his vocals become clearer in the mix.

“Anywhere Anyone” features Mia Doi Todd. The lyrics sound like snippets of other songs spliced together into a cohesive whole. The song itself is beautiful, swirling almost-trip-hop that sounds a bit like Massive Attack in a major key.

Music

Rounds by Four Tet

Okay, I’ll admit it: there’s supposed to be a review of Draft 7.30 in this space. I know it and you know it. Thing is, I just can’t get my thoughts together on it, so I’m taking some time away from it. It’s not that I plan to say bad things about it, it’s just that I don’t know what to write yet.

Basically, I’m procrastinating. I’m very good at that sort of thing. In fact, I could say I’ve made an art form out of it. At least then I could feel good about it, but I’d be lying.

Thing is, there’s a part of me that’s just not always up for the challenge, and at the moment that’s the part that’s dictating my actions.

I’ll have a review up soon. I promise. Honest.

In the meantime, I give you the new Four Tet. I really enjoyed Pause when it came out, and for a few weeks it was in heavy rotation around the house.