The new album from Ben Reynolds is almost more of a collection of alien beeps, hums, chimes, and drones than actual songs since there’s little melodic interplay between these elements. As an interpretation of the cosmos, however, it succeeds splendidly.
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The fourth Henri Pousseur CD in Sub Rosa’s Early Electronics series features two long works. Although his condensation of his own interpretation of the Faust legend has been heard infrequently, this is the premiere of "Crosses of Crossed Colors" and to me is the more intriguing and powerful of the two.
Queztolcoatl is the one man noise project of Dublin’s Timothy. All of the releases I’ve listened to from his label, Haunted Tape, are heavily indebted to anything and everything on the similarly named American Tapes run by Wolf Eyes. This holds true for The Eternal Electrical Flesh Storm. Much of the hour or so of audio could be culled from anyone of the many lacklustre Wolf Eyes releases. It sounds to me like noise done for the sake of boredom.
This is a psychedelic folk four piece that from Chicago who combine a fin de siècle chamber style similar to Rasputina but stripped of any rock and pop pretensions. Blended with eastern tones and rhythms the result is a spectacular album.
For their second album, this trio utilizes traditional and exotic instruments that are refocused digitally into airy, minimalistic atmospheres with a quasi-mystical vibe that's geared more toward darkness than enlightenment.
Inspired by the low-volume, "marginal" sounds that make up the unconscious bed music of urban living, Paiuk creates a tape collage of musique concrète for the microsound/lowercase generation.
Although Peter Wright is a talented musician who produces evocative drones, what separates his music on this album from others exploring similar territory are the field recordings underlying the mix which provide a narrative of sorts. If they don't add up to one grand tale, then it is these pockets of stories scattered throughout the album that lend it an emotional core.
Daniel Burton recruits a talented cast, including members of Black Mountain and Windsor for the Derby, to expand a track from 2002’s Let Us Garlands Bring into a touching suite of songs surrounded by emotionally charged instrumentals.
