Peoplehave grown so accustomed to Kieran Hebden's work as Four Tet that theyhave probably almost completely forgotten what his role as amusician/composer was in Fridge and the directions the trio werebeginning to pursue on their last full-length release, Happiness.The people who are aware and welcoming to more loose sounds will be themore receptive audience for this brand new project, as Hebden hasteamed up with Steve Reid, a seasoned drummer known for his work insoul and jazz circles.
Look up Music for gazing upwards brought to you by Meat Beat Manifesto & scott crow, +/-, Aurora Borealis, The Veldt, Not Waving & Romance, W.A.T., The Handover, Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri, Mulatu Astatke, Paul St. Hilaire & René Löwe, Songs: Ohia, and Shellac. Aurora Borealis image from California by Steve. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
The fourth, and final, in this spaced-out series is the perfect bookend to Cope’s explorations in the dichotomous world cosmological and Earth Mother minded rock. Consisting of the rediscovered first effort and the last ever track recorded for his Rite sequence, Cope shows little sign of doing anything less than 23 minutes when it comes to playing for purely meditational purposes.
Paranoia runs rampant all over this disc, a sense of voyeurism and danger with it, slowly escalating with every cautious movement. The technology we've built up all around us is slowly evaporating, wearing away with rain and wind. Nobody is sure what's beneath everything, what's grown since we buried ourselves beneath steel towers and miles of wire, but Echran is observing and recording the entire event.
Texan Rick Reed is a true multi-instrumentalist ofexperimental traditions. His primarycompositions, for sine wave, short-wave and Moog, represent mastery of thetexturally-intense, sculptural minimalism nowadays crunched down from the Powerbooktable.
This exceptional single track of bliss on lone droner Hardwick’s debut 3" CD-R runs into nearly eighteen minutes of steadily yearning cloud nine emissions. Wrapped in a garish Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label style wallpaper sample, the music is thankfully made with much better taste.
I've been worried about music without discernable melodies or intriguing concepts lately because I'm finding more and more that they fail me. A host of "difficult" bands have released album after album of strange sounds and subconscious cut and paste tactics, but more often than not there's something musical, fun, or catchy playing side by side with all the insanity. Greg Davis and Steven Hess both reach for that extra something on this disc, but come away with an important piece of the musical puzzle missing.
I'd champion this as the emo-heavy electronic album of 2006 if it weren't deserving of just slightly more praise than that. Shaw-Han Lien composes ultra-busy synthetic pop songs using the same old four-on-the-floor rhythm tracks and toppling sound banks made popular by disco and techno performers, but he adds his own extra-processed spice to the music, making it almost enjoyable. It is simultaneously bright, sunny, and altogether sickening.
This is a spring/summer guitar record that’s been designed to fall somewhere between the earthy simplicity of folk players and the flash of '70s heavy rock. There are understated flamboyant twists to the playing and sound of Ezra Feinberg (ex Piano Magic) and Tim Green (The Fucking Champs and The Nation of Ulysses). The band’s name (and the LP title) maybe be pronounced like Stevie Wonder did on "Living for the City," but this album is anything but straight urban rock.
I had never listened to Maximum Joy, I knew they were connected withThe Pop Group, who I had a passing interest in, but I can now understand whyMaximum Joy have descended into such obscurity. The songs on thiscompilation have not withstood the test of time: the music here soundsextremely dated and (worse again) it isn’t very good; this might be oneonly for the nostalgia crowd and/or Pop Group collectors.
Not Alonepacks more than five hours of exclusive material by some of today'sfinest recording artists into one massive benefit album, the brainchildof Mark Logan of Jnana Records and David Tibet of Current 93. Asmight be predicted, many of the artists contained herein arerecognizable as the "usual suspects" of the extended C93 family—artistslike Antony, Simon Finn, Shirley Collins, John Contreras and Nurse WithWound. However, the set also unexpectedly contains contributions by astaggering number of indie and underground luminaries who exist welloutside of the perceived "apocalyptic folk" milieu.
