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Brainwashed | Tuesday, 09 February 2010

Events - Release Dates

2/7/2010 - 2/13/2010

New stuff is due this week from Gil Scott-Heron, Hot Chip, Black Cobra, and old stuff is due from Nitzer Ebb.
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News - Site News

This Week's Podcast

Podcast #213: February 2, 2010. New and old music from Boys of Summer, TackHead, Mudboy, Rodelius, Moebius, BJ Nilsen, Keith Hudson, K. Frimpong and His Cubanos Fiestas, Akron/Family & Angels of Light, and Stars of the Lid.
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Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, "Kollaps Tradixionales"

Compared to the sprawling songs on their previous album 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra have streamlined their songs as well as their name and their line up for this album (the band are now a far more manageable five piece compared to the larger ensembles of previous albums). Granted there are still a couple of monster-sized pieces here but there are a number of shorter, punchier songs to break them up. Kollaps Tradixionales shows this pared down Silver Mt. Zion in ferocious form, the stark beauty of their music reinforced with a renewed fire in their bellies. As usual, I am completely blown away by their music.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Harappian Night Recordings, "The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele"

The title of this album alludes to a deeply macabre and scatological Indonesian myth about young girl who possessed the dubious magical ability to defecate surprising items ranging from earrings to knives to...well...gongs. When she distributed these items to men at a village dance, the villagers collectively decided that her power was an infernal and unseemly one and that they needed to bury her alive. Fortunately, the story has a happy (albeit grisly) ending, as her friend later dug up her corpse, dismembered it, and reburied its parts all over the village, which caused delicious tuberous plants to grow.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

"The Harmonic Series"

The anchoring of western music to equal temperament has on one hand lead to many musical developments but on the other hand, there is a whole world of musical textures and approaches to composition lost to instruments that are stuck playing in chromatic scales. On this excellent compilation, several artists explore intonation from a number of different approachesm utilizing a range of instruments. Ranging from almost ambient soundworks to difficult conceptual pieces, The Harmonic Series is an expansive anthology of unusual and beautiful music.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Aranos, "Crow Eye Hint"

Aranos’s new long-form opus may be a bit lacking in his characteristic eccentricity, but it maintains his usual high standards of adventurousness, difficulty, and oblique conceptuality. While ostensibly a drone piece, the tone is much less meditative than I expected. Instead, Crow Eye Hint is a nakedly experimental and exploratory work for much of its duration, focusing on both negative space and the acoustic properties of misused pianos and clashing tones. Also, it gets pretty scary.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

The Aeolian String Ensemble, "Lassithi/Elysium"

Recorded throughout the '90s and released in 1998 by Robot Records, the first proper album from The Aeolian String Ensemble is something of a mystery. Though it is attributed primarily to the work of David Kenny, the liner notes for Lassithi/Elysium also mention names like David Tibet and Steven Stapleton. Both songs bear out comparisons to music by either one, but the Ensemble's especially light touch and new age flourishes are entirely unique to them.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Whitehouse, "Quality Time"

In the canon of Whitehouse, this is an odd release. It lacks the unabashed brutality of the early releases, the monotone sex-crazed sounds of the mid period, and is far more restrained than anything that has been released since. I think for that reason this has become, at least for me, their lost classic. Not lacking the caustic, angry vocals and genuinely disturbing moments of their discography, the other component is a very nuanced study of electronic textures, and an oh-so-subtle sense of humor and irony that really holds it all together.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Current 93, "Earth Covers Earth"

Earth Covers Earth was the first Current 93 album I obsessed over. I acquired it not long after I found a copy of Emblems for $2.89 in a bargain bin at a record store where none of the clerks had ever heard of David Tibet or Current 93. It was a godsend. When I first heard Emblems it was like being drawn towards a black hole, and when I finally sealed my fate by listening to Earth Covers Earth I was pulled beyond the event horizon. One of the things I love about this album is the mixture of Tibet’s own lyrical songwriting, traditional tunes, and the obscure metaphysical poetry set to music. Pervaded by a vitriolic melancholy, I listen to it when I want to evoke the intermingled feelings of sadness, hope, futility, anger, joy and faith.

Reviews - Concert Report

Cluster with Boys of Summer

On their massive two date tour of Ireland and the UK, Dieter Moebius and Hans- Joachim Roedelius’ stopover in Dublin defied expectations. Of course there were no greatest hits played but they played a thrilling set that touched on the various phases of their career. Simultaneously enthralling and bemusing, they did their best to keep the audience on their toes through unpredictable alterations in the direction of the music. All this combined with the welcome addition of local synth nuts Boys of Summer made for a night to remember.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Éric La Casa, "Zone Sensible 2/Dundee 2"

Consisting of two distinct conceptual pieces spread across a total of four tracks, La Casa creates sound based upon the disparate concepts of both nature and urban sprawl, utilizing field recordings in each case both in their untouched and heavily treated states. The complex result is simultaneously warm and inviting, yet cold and detached, exactly as the source material would lead one to expect.
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Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Boys of Summer, "V"

The debut release from this synthesiser duo of Andrew Fogarty and Ivan Pawle is a raw but ultimately unsatisfying release which fails to capture the full potential of the group. The basic ingredients are here but they have not come together yet. That being said, this is far from a bad release but based on this EP alone there is not a lot to separate Boys of Summer from the countless other CD-R/tape culture groups out there.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Boys of Summer, "Pharaoh"

Expanded to a three piece, this second EP from Dublin’s Boys of Summer hits all the spots that V failed to tickle. With a far richer palette of tones at their disposal, the group offer an immensely satisfying journey through the dustier regions of that piece of meat between the ears that calls itself a brain. Like transmissions from another planet, these three pieces are alien sounding and utterly bewitching.

Reviews - Albums/CDs/Singles

Minamo, "Durée"

Having been stalwarts in the Japanese electroacoustic microsound scene for over a decade now, the quartet has always focused on unifying the usually disparate worlds of laptop based programming and improvised organic music. For their second release on the 12k label, they have done exactly that, marrying acoustic guitar with software patches, all presented in a warm, post-rock influenced analog audio bath.

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Buzz Bin
Yann Tiersen - Palestine EP Mouthus/Bulbs split LP Skitliv: 'Bloodletting' 10" Picture Disc (feat CURRENT 93) Sehnsucht: 'Wüste' CD Aranos, "Crow Eye Hint"

Concerts and Exhibitions
Legendary Pink Dots 30th Anniversary Tour - PART 2. Trans Am VTB new releases and Courtis/Moore tour Baby Dee North America A Place To Bury Strangers North America Tortoise in North America Cosey Complex