|
Drone Records
Stefan Knappe (ex-Maeror Tri and current Troum member) has, since January of 1993, released a horde of EPs by musicians whose primary focus is on the electronic and the unknown realms of the mind. Under the name Drone Records, he has released 7" slabs from Beequeen, Aube, Reynols, Big City Orchestra, and a multitude of other noise makers, space creators, and denizens of the subconscious. In June of 2004, four 7" records were released by four different performers. Solielkraast, Cisfinitum, Herbst9, and Aidan Baker each have approximately 16-17 minutes of crashing metal, delicate piano hollows, buzzing machinery, and watery graves on these gorgeously and extravagantly packaged records. Being a fan of all things relatively uncertain, mysterious, and esoteric, these records come as absolutely stunning examples of how powerful the unconventional can be. There aren't any beats to speak of, there aren't any catchy melodies, but there's a divine resonance on each one of these 7" records that deserves close attention. The name Drone Records might be a little misleading; the music on these records aren't always just shifting tones and electronic humming. Each composition on the following four releases echoes with careful arrangements, broad and imaginative sound sources, and an understanding of just how life-like sound can be.
Solielkraast, "Choresonic Preludes to a Dark Cycle"
Drone Records
Two pieces of vastly different music occupy this 7" and the sheer grace that they are handled with evidence a superior composer behind it all. The first side is full of escalating violence and phased aggression echoing up and through a bottomless pit filled with something too desperate to even name. Its slime worms its way up through dirt and hidden, underground passages until it finally surges to the top and explodes in a glorious and suicidal display of sound and fury. The second side is a consideration of the night and its chilling aura. A piano rolls delicately about the air while a moonlit mountain exhibits some strange behavior in the distance. The trees blow slowly, sounds snap and wheeze in the distance, and time begins to slow down. These two tracks couldn't be much different. Solielkraast is evidently a one-man project from out of Nantes, France. The noise and abrasive elements of "Zoyd Kraast" come as a complete contrast to the frailty, delicacy, and intricacy of "Eesdaia." While many beatless or sound-collage records might maintain a constant tone so as to establish a mood and use it to its full potential, Solielkraast reaches for opposite poles and ends up getting a firm hold on both of them. Not only are two excellent extremes presented on this release, but both are calculated and arranged to near perfection. The trembling and robust piano playing on "Eesdaia" is pure fear and dread come to life and its considerate role in this song makes it one of the most extraordinary pieces of strange music I've heard this year. It isn't just the music that is spectacular, however. The vinyl itself is orange with yellow dustings and it comes inside a handmade cover by Solielkraast. This release has provided as much as a 7" can, but I'm aching for more than just these 17 minutes. - Lucas Schleicher
samples:
Cisfinitum, "VS"
Drone Records
Cold northern nights ring through the open air in the form of ferocious roars and distorted whines on this 7" from the heart of Russia. Insanely packaged in the warmth of a two-inch thick, hand-sewn, wool cover and numbered by the duo, the music on VS is sickeningly intense and nauseatingly careful. A full onslaught of boisterous misery might have a frightful effect on some, but Cisfinitum opt to stir fear by mixing near-familiar elements into something completely unfamiliar. I can't be certain, but it sounds like wounded dogs are crying over the horizon and a strange machine is buzzing, maybe grinding something or someone inside those shattered buildings and empty wharehouses. There's a low moan of uneasiness perpetuated by the sounds of "Curve" and they don't go away. Even though the intensity dies down towards the end of the track, it keeps its malady alive in by introducing the terror of silence and the unknown. Pipes drip inside, the trees rustle outside, and in the vicinity is a wheezing entity, moving slowly through the shadows and towards the open window. As though the psychological tension couldn't be any greater, Cisfinitum starts side two with an echo of strange voices caught up in the walls of rot; walls that look like skeletons when viewed from afar. "Curse" begins gently enough but then erupts violently with a cascade of war drums, desperate radio broadcasts, and the most diabolical of laughs. However Cisfinitum records, they obviously have the power to capture to the essence of locations. The mood and dire feel of this whole record imply a kind of horror that can only be summoned via great care and with some amount of Lovecraftian knowledge. Ultimately it is that Lovecraftian sense of the enormous and uncontrollable that Cisfinitum manage to commit to record. The sounds and spaces that they evoke seem infinite and, in that respect, they recall the blank and abysmal fear of what can't be known or understood. - Lucas Schleicher
samples:
Herbst9, "Enenylyn"
Drone Records
This German duo must have some understanding of what it means to be universal. Their sounds are of sources that are completely unknown to me (though I can describe their qualities) and yet they can evoke a sense of comfort and complete familiarity. The way that "Mletkin" begins, I was sure that I was going to face more of the faceless. The sounds on both of these songs begin darkly, as though the demonic and evil were central to Herbst9's music. As the sounds progress, however, light and simple keyboards play steady one and two note melodies that fade and drift between eachother. Harmonies begin to phase into the body of found sounds, sacred melodies, and quiet rattles and soon after, it's difficult to imagine anything even remotely dangerous or unbearable. Enenylyn is a beautiful mixture of the seen and the unseen, the light and the dark, or the mundane and the sacred. "Mletkin" begins as an uneasy whirl through a long and empty shaft; only medical light illuminates the walls here and what waits at the end of this drop is black and grievous. A strange trembling sound fills this shaft until, at last, the fall ends and it empties into a perfect space filled only with the most healing of light. The frog sounds and cosmic rushes of sound all mesh together with the aquatic rumble of enormous caverns and starlight moans. The movement of the entire song is one of life and death. "Mletkin" begins as an undefined mass and, in its attempt to find itself, opens a wound that spills out the most wonderful music. All this only to fade away into the undefined again. "Tynemlem" continues by picking up the aquatic sounds from side one and translating them into a slightly less dense piece of music. Again, it seems as thought Herbst9 likes to move between concepts, never allowing a sense of fear to linger for too long, and never letting the aura of life in the keyboards stand alone. As a strange mud or thick liquid boils in a cauldron, a slow steam builds in pipes layered just beneath the ground and pebbles roll about on the floor through the volition of their own will. Just as new and recognizable sounds begin to breathe themselves to life, a faint and strongly emotional melody begins to cycle in the background, growing louder with each repetition. A river of natural and synthetic roars, groans, and hushes sketch themselves over this melody until the piece collapses over the edge of a waterfall in a sudden and explosive death. Once again I find this isn't enough: I'm wishing that these fifteen minutes could be expanded into a full fourty or fifty. - Lucas Schleicher
samples:
Aidan Baker, "Same River Twice"
Drone Records
The synthetic compositions of this Canadian-native are more structured and musical than anything else and thus they stand out and away from the other June releases on Drone Records. An orchestral string section of synthesizers sway back and forth like a boat at sea as "Same River Twice" begins and slowly any distinction between boat and sea is eroded by the duration of the sounds. Crystalline bird calls and full, indefinite tones begin to coalesce with each other and somehow provide the illusion of guitar strings being plucked. The pelagic corpus of music slowly melds into each other until no distinction can be made whatsoever between the music that began this song and the elements that were added slowly. If "Same River Twice" is akin to a swelling mass of memories, ideas, and emotions, then "Some Of My Best Friends Are 3/4 Water" is akin to an ancient mystical dance that might've been played out in 13th or 14th century Arabia. A flute plays an intricate helix of notes that slide and swirl like smoke throughout the air and the whistle of rough materials gliding against each other reverberate against immaculate palace walls. Some manner of seductive dance plays itself out on a showroom floor and quietly, like a building storm, a strain becomes evident on the faces of all the spectators and surge of energy pours forth and finds itself expressed in the rhythmic beating of bells and hammered instruments. The slow pace and absolutely sexual nature of this piece is addictive and I'm sure I could wear out the vinyl listening to this song over and over again. The way that the stringed instruments shimmer and meditate with the flute and the atonal plucking of strings produces a trance-like effect that borders on the hypnotic. Though the theme of water seemed obvious to me on the first side, on the second it seems as though the desert is at heart of everything. I can easily imagine an individual galloping across the desert on a horse in a desperate attempt to outrun a coming sandstorm. All the decadence and colors of affluent kings with their spices and flourishing trade routes haunt the instruments and arrangement of side two. Aidan Baker has released quite a few records through other channels, but this could easily serve as a great introduction to his work. Both sides are addictive pieces of strange music that obtain a kind of sensuous quality few others even bother trying to reach for. - Lucas Schleicher
samples:
The Fall, "50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong"
Beggars Banquet
The recent years have seen a number of very specific compilations of Fall-related material, collections of singles and explorations of early eras of the band's development, all adding to the smoldering flame of contemporary interest in a group who has soldiered long and hard at developing a catalog that is deep and wide enough to reward perusal. The very volume of material that makes the Fall worthy of such intense scrutiny can also be quite taxing for the uninitiated who could easily get lost in the myriad of styles, sounds, labels, lineups, attitudes, and confusing bends along the way. 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong offers a competent selection of the various Falls—enough to serve as points of demarcation along their career and plot a rudimentary roadmap to the Fall that suits you best, or the one that might fit a particular mood. The two disc set spans from the bands inception all the way up to the present, with selections from The Real New Fall LP. The north star of this catastrophic cartographic challenge is Mark E. Smith, ruefully half rapping in a slew of disassociations and complex slurs. The dominance of his personality directs the music, from the initial barking and bristling scrawls of "New Face in Hell" across the years to slicker tracks like "High Tension Line" and "Telephone Thing." These latter songs lose nothing to the greater care afforded their production, as Smith's wry delivery is equally as cutting. To hear the musical constellation around Smith shift over the years, gaining increased fidelity and more precision can be startling at times. An evolution that may have spanned a record or taken a few tracks to get used to can be dropped in here at a moments notice, and may disorient, however proper orientation and comfort should most likely not be a high priority for anyone seeking to inure themselves with the Fall. 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong arrives just on time, with the band seemed poised for a millennial renaissance, producing new and vital music while highlighting the storied past behind them. Any future pressings of this collection will no doubt need to push that number up much higher. - Michael Patrick Brady
samples:
BOYD RICE/NON, "TERRA INCOGNITA: AMBIENT WORKS 1975-PRESENT"
Mute
For an avowed proponent of the might-makes-right doctrines of Social Darwinism and a frequent spokesman for neo-Satanic philosophies, Boyd Rice sure does spend a lot of time trying to persuade us he has a softer side. Whether through the campy pop songbook of Spell's Seasons In the Sun or his compilation of saccharine girl-group pop Music For Pussycats, the infamous provocateur behind such classics as "Let's Hear it For Violence Towards Women" lately seems to be exhibiting his kindler, gentler qualities. Terra Incognita chooses 13 tracks from almost 30 years of recordings with a special emphasis on atmosphere, moodiness and listenability. A release like this is certainly a pointless waste of time for Non aficionados who have already collected the albums from which these tracks are drawn, but for those just dipping their feet into brackish Boyd Rice waters, it's slightly less pointless. These 13 tracks (and the lengthy liner notes by Brian M. Clark) make the case for Boyd Rice as musical innovator, focusing on his unorthodox experiments with tape loops, distressed vinyl and self-built noisemakers as methods employed to open up the possibilities of experimental music. Indeed, you would be hard-pressed to find contemporaries doing anything remotely similar to the "music" on Boyd Rice's 1975 debut, with the possible exception of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Further, Boyd's combination of the noise aesthetic with extremist politics, occultism and moral transgression impregnated his music with a richly suggestive atmosphere. Listening to the grinding sheets of noise and distortion on any of Non's albums, one could imagine all sorts of subliminal messages worming their way into the subconscious; pick out all manner of sound effects, voices and subtle aural nuances that may or may not have been placed there intentionally. Using a technique similar to the Burroughs/Gysin concept of the "third mind," Boyd Rice often overlaps two different sound sources to create a third, unpredictable frequency that supercedes artistic manipulation and creates something sublimely unsettling. The majority of the tracks on Terra Incognita play to Rice's obsession with easy listening music and 60's girl-pop, utilizing looped, distorted samples from vintage pop novelty singles. "Extract 4" from Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing, Boyd's 1981 collaboration with the late Frank Tovey of Fad Gadget, matches a slowly decaying circus calliope with grating buzzsaw noises. What could very well be a loop lifted directly from a Lee Hazlewood production, turned slightly askew and refracted back onto itself, forms the basis of "Immolation of Man." Successive tracks are more austere and gothic, from the dusty, windswept chimes of Blood and Flame's "Cruenta Voluptas" to the ghostly Gregorian conflagration of "The Fountain of Fortune," taken from Non's recent artistic misfire Children of the Black Sun. "Untitled 1" from Boyd Rice's self-titled 1975 debut seems to prefigure Boards of Canada, consisting of a warbling easy-listening loop awash with nostalgia, layered with sheets of drone and audio decay. Taken together, Terra Incognita is a well-sequenced collection that proves Boyd Rice is more than merely the sum of his offenses. - Jonathan Dean
samples:
Arve Henriksen, "Chiaroscuro"
Rune Grammofon
With his first solo record, Arve Henriksen proved, consciously or not, that he could step boldly away from Supersilent's authoritarian shadow and develop a style all his own. On Sakuteiki the trumpeter did more than abandon the darkly ambient, jazz-fucked cityscapes of his father group; by limiting instrumentation to the horn alone, Henriksen created a smoky, elegant tone poem with allusions to Japanese folk and classical musics, successfully juxtaposed with the alien texturing of the day's more established avant-trumpeting techniques (see the arid, pursed playing of Franz Hautzinger, Alex Dörner etc). Sampling and layering his varying strands of breath, Henriksen establishes a dreamlike atmosphere that rarely calls attention to the extremes of his instrument as free-jazzers might. Instead the mood is more of a weary, timeless, psychedelic sort, where piece-by-piece his trumpet fades into the movements of a detailed, irreducible landscape, intensely colorful but never jarring. Chiaroscuro's title aptly warns that it will provide no rest from the abstract dream-mapping of its predecessor, but the record does show Henriksen lightening up a bit, no longer limited to his trumpet and wordless vocal, this time adding two new musicians to his band, a percussionist and livesampling expert. These additions give Chiaroscuro a looser, live-r feeling while keeping up with Sakuteiki's patchwork brilliance. The timeless, graying overtones of that album are lost here, but they're replaced by a feeling that the players are coloring in spaces as they go, a lush and growing environment that is incrementally fortified as the three play off and coil within the thought-lines of each other's playing. Henriksen lets his vocal match the music's newer flamboyance, soaring to heights that often give his android-feminine croon prominence over the brass. No doubt the trumpeter has benefited from the new ways of hearing and accompanying himself afforded by Jan Bang's livesampling abilities. Bang's cuts and assemblages sound less solemn or cyclical than Henriksen's own from the first record, and the trumpeter responds with a buoyant playing style that sacrifices none of Sakuteiki's hidden drama. The resulting joyful, relaxed, even tropical feeling is enough to characterize Chiaroscuro and will distinguish the record from the artist's past work. Here is not so much the sound of Henriksen stepping out on his own as stepping forward into something new.
- Andrew Culler
samples:
BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS, "ASTRAL WALK"
Finalmuzik
I suppose it was only a matter of time before Coil's intoxicating aesthetic concoction of homoeroticism, ritual occultism, and drug-fueled decadence spawned its own specialized microculture. CCCPierce and Massimo of Black Sun Productions are probably not the first, but are certainly the most determined at expressing and embodying their zealous devotion to all things unquiet, sidereal and lunar. A pair of pierced, tattooed, European ex-prostitutes joined together by civil union, Massimo and Pierce have explored and expounded upon the latent ideas in Coil's music by mounting a series of sexual performances, public and private, called Plastic Spider Thing, involving bondage, blood-drinking, ritualized sex acts and networks of stretched plastic webbing. Their website (www.black-sun-productions.com) has grown over the years to include photographic documents of their various aesthetic transgressions, from hardcore fisting videos to journals with each page splashed with semen. Their first musical endeavor was 2002's album-length collection of Coil remixes by BSP associate DraZen, commissioned as a soundtrack for performances of Plastic Spider Thing. It was an unimpressively murky mix of backwards-tracked selections from Threshold House's oevre with loads of extraneous effects, dulling the edge off everything that makes Coil spectacular. For this, their second foray into the musical arena, Pierce takes the reigns to create an album of new material, a warped electronic song cycle owing a substantial debt to the Moon Musick boys. Again conceived as a soundtrack to Plastic Spider Thing (Part XXII), Astral Walk is a big leap forward for BSP, if not an entirely successful album in itself. I'm guessing that the majority of this album was made with a similar array of analogue synthesizers and sequencers as those used in Coil's recordings, and it shows. "Entrata Lentissima" (transl: "Slowest Entrance") starts things off with a typically squishy, misshapen alien rhythm, soon joined by a cresting wave of those Coil-trademarked shuddering, vibratory electronics. It's a textural, psychedelic sound, and for extreme Coil fetishists like me, it's immediately attractive. But after listening to "Lento" and "Moderato," which all but repeat the exact same audio strategies, adding layers of dark, droning strings familiar from Musick to Play in the Dark, a cold feeling begins to set in. Unbelievably, all nine tracks on Astral Walk use this same derivative bag of tricks, in various combinations, at various tempos. I had to keep checking my player to make sure I wasn't stuck in repeat mode. The album's repetitiveness makes it a very unattractive proposition for repeat listens. The dark, industrialized cover of Soft Cell's "Meet Murder My Angel" is a lone spot of respite from the rest of the album's uniformity, Massimo contributing spooky whispered vocals over intensely sexualized rhythms. The photos of Pierce and Massimo adorning the sleeve aim for the romantic, homoerotic celluloid fantasies of Derek Jarman, to whom the album is dedicated. Though Astral Walk is clearly a major improvement over their last album, and there is much that hardcore Coil enthusiasts may like about the music, I hope that BSP will eventually find their own unique musical identity outside the rather large shadow cast by their heroes. - Jonathan Dean
samples:
"we could live in hope"
Fractured Discs
Tribute albums fall into different categories. There's the serious, professionally assembled tribute albums with a cast of well-known well-respected players on a firmly established or hip record label (see Blue Skied an' Clear and A Tribute to Spacemen 3); there's the abominable releases where a cast of has-beens and never-have-beens are found together unbeknowest in some cash-in-quick scheme (see the entire Cleopatra catalogue); there's the fanboy ones where a group of friends just decide to do something for kicks and trade it amongst themselves (see nearly any email list); then there's the painful, uninspiring ones which are posing as a professional tribute but wind up with more bad contributions than good ones (see For the Masses and A Means to and End). We Could Live In Hope isn't simply a Low tribute, it's a song-by-song cover of Low's very first full-length album (with two versions of "Words.") With a cast of people like Red House Painters' Marc Kozelek, His Name is Alive with Dan and Liz from Ida, A Northern Chorus, and Jessica Bailiff, the disc seems promising, but it's got some harsh problematic recordings which hold it back. Kicking off a record with a weak, out of tune and false accent-touting Daniel G Harmann version of "Words" is a complete mistake and gives me little hope for the rest. While Pale Horse and Rider add a pedal steel to "Fear" and A Northern Chorus go deep in their version of "Slide," the disc is already turning out to be a bit too samey. These are obviously people who have been so influenced by Low already in their own music, that nearly every album is a tribute, making a cover tune almost completely redundant. Most of the tunes, while pleasant, suffer from a lack of originality and simply go in one ear and out the other. Mark Kozelek is a saving grace, however, as his fingerpicking and rearrangement of "Lazy" turns it into a completely different song, however, this hope is almost immediately shattered when the first notes of Kid Dakota's "Lullaby" makes it sound like they want to be Low. Idaho's Coldplay-ish "Rope" makes me want to find one and the second version of "Words" is flat, tired, depressing, and drags on way too long (and coincidentally with some absurd accent). Thankfully the album ends on a very inspiring note, as His Name Is Alive with Nanang Tatang present a very graceful version of "Sunshine," which, actually isn't a Low cover, but that tune we all sang in kindergarten. (I also have the sneaking suspicion this is simply a Warn Defever remix of a song which appeared on Elizabeth Mitchell's You Are My Sunshine album a few years back, but I can't prove it at this point.) Luckily We Could Live In Hope escapes being the worst kind of tribute, but it comes dangerously close. If I just make my own CD-R and only use Halou's version of "Words" instead of the other two here, it's going to sound much better. - Jon Whitney
samples:
We know that our music picks may be somewhat challenging to find, which is why we have a community section which can be used to obtain nearly everything available on this site. |
