Bad News From Houston is a duo consisting of John Dieterich and Thollem McDonas. John you may know from a little band called Deerhoof. But who the hell is this McDonas character? Where the hell did this guy come from? And what the hell is he doing to that piano? That. That is not what a piano sounds like, usually, I don't think. I saw these guys down at Festolano 2011 pretty randomly (back then they were called Tone Team), which was a double-house show/BBQ/shit-show in the seedier suburban end of Albuqueque, NM. "Prepared piano" would be a way to describe what McDonas does that you'd recognize, but somehow his approach goes a little further. He really accentuates the percussive qualities of the instrument, figuring its acoustics in totally new ways amid an array of drums, cymbals and electronic effects - a real kitchen-sink setup that incorporates not only a lot of different textures, but his entire body. What he put together for his instrument is something else, but how he's able to use it isanother thing altogether. Lightning fast playing, but incredibly tempered and under control, a splintering of the beat into its multitudinous divisions, each clip, ping, pang, pong, clap, splat or bong at its own specific volume. It's crazy. And Dieterich's spiky guitar work is an easy match, also really highlighting the moments of soft tenderness that the band can just sweep themselves into.
What? Oh yeah, this is a Videodrone, I almost forgot. Check out this rad claymated clip by Tuia Cherici, which features a guy who's probably not a lot unlike yourself, sitting there glued to his laptop and watching videos for weird jazz-noise bands who played at a random house-show festival in Albuquerque, NM once. Only one difference is that this guy is willing to just take a shit without leaving the comfort of his desktop. .. at least I hope that's a difference.
This Videodrone brought to you by Crawf
p.s. Bad News From Houston also has an album, and it's amazing.
**Editor's note: After chatting with Mr. McDonas, it has come to my attention that Tone Team was ANOTHER batshit crazy spazz-jazz-improve/duo featuring John Dieterich and Jeremy Barnes, not McDonas. Similar configuration and sound, which explains the mixup. Apologies to all parties involved! I EVEN CHECKED THAT FACT AND IT WAS STILL WRONG. amazing.
Byline: Videomulch pioneer, Luke Wyatt's is a placid, engaging piece of work that finds its home in muted tones and minimalism.
Luke Wyatt probably doesn’t know this, and I have never quite had the appropriate outlet for a mash note like this, but he changed my life. Some of you had 400 Blows or some equally devastating freshman-year-in-college piece of art that blew your mind and forced you to change your major to something like film/art/contemporary miming with a minor in movement. Luke Wyatt was that for me. Seeing his “videomulch” reappropriation of straight to VHS tapes and daytime TV into real, moving visual art pieces was all I needed to jumpstart a hobby of trying to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING while never quite capturing Wyatt’s magic of juxtaposition and nostalgia. He used scanning lines and pixilated key mattes like artists use color and hue.
This five song EP is Wyatt’s first foray into recorded music under the moniker Lossmaker on Nihti’s excellent, up and coming lo-bit landscape imprint. If Wyatt’s visual style is any indication on his musical approach, we could expect something more of a found-sound composition of pre-recorded sounds. Lossmaker, however, is nothing like that. Lossmaker starts with a stark and simple piano-violin duet under the light hiss of a tape recorder. It is repetitive without being cold, elegant but not overthought. This refrain is repeated later in the EP, this time the digital doppleganger to the first. Piano and violin replaced by synthesizer. Tape hiss giving way to tape decay. With five songs, Wyatt is able to keep things squarely between these poles. The rest of the EP is all guitar swirl, sometimes looped and drug under snowfort of reverb and sometimes strummed clean and direct accompanied by slow, syrupy synths and crisp beats filtered through the warm fuzz of a rerecorded VHS tape of True Lies from that one time it was shown on TV. I thnk they used to call this electroacoustic or something dumb like that.
Wyatt’s other musical persona, Torn Hawk, shows up it fits and starts, usually as analogue flotsam caught in the jet stream and coughed back into the track in the form of a bit-crushed spurt of noise or out-of-joint break. Otherwise, the EP floats placidly on a lake of its own contentment with resurrecting the dead, placing itself (in the way musical lines and fragments are repeated through the composition) back on the couch in the basement of its best friend, watching reruns of Wings and Northern Exposure.
Like Wyatt’s visual work, in Lossmaker he understands how much of our lives are informed by floating bits of unplaced nostalgia. In his visual work Wyatt pulls these from cancelled sitcoms, commercials for moisturizer, with Lossmaker Wyatt recalls the warped synthesizers that peeped through the static of AM college radio stations late at night that you were too young to really “get”. Lossmaker is an attempt to understand those, resurrect them for a brief moment and then send you on your way because your day is packed. Thanks Luke Wyatt, if you are ever in Swaziland/Denver/Cincinnati, I owe you dinner.
Byline: Pensive drone landscapes from the incredible Constellation Tatsu label
"Who has turned us round like this so that we,
whatever we do, have the bearing of
someone who's going away?"
- Rainer Maria Rilke
I love it when album artwork perfectly illustrates its sound. Recently I was struck by how well the humble photograph of a woman’s back among flowering trees described Lightness and Irresponsibility by Celer. The cover reminds me of the work of one of my favorite painters, Caspar David Friedrich, whose works frequently feature the backs of a small figures or figures looking out onto a vast landscape. When viewing these paintings the audience gets a glimpse into the contemplative experience of the subject. Similarly, when I listen to this two song cassette/digital album I feel like I am also participating in a shared contemplative experience. Like Friedrich, Celer’s Will Long has composed an expansive landscape. This is not the dramatic landscape of shipwrecks and polar expeditions (as in Freidrich’s “Sea of Ice” from 1823) but rather, this is one of soft edges and seemingly infinite vistas (as with the classic “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” from 1818). While Friedrich may celebrate exotic locations in his paintings, I believe the Celer album is perfect for being where you are. By that I mean that this is the kind of album that encourages stillness. The great Constellation Tatsu label put out this tape in 2012 consisting of two long drones titled, “An Unforced Cheerfulness” and “Involuntary Impromptu.” Both sides unfold gradually and with exceptional restraint. There are subtle, almost imperceptible overlays of warm tones and low bass-filled hums washing back and forth from ear to ear. If you’re looking for music to accompany horizon-gazing – you’ve found it.
Swazis have a much more fluid view of time and timeliness than our rigid, Western, beat-the-clock mentality. When something will happen in the relative near future they will say “now.” “I am coming now,” can mean anything from 10 minutes to later that day. “Now, now” is more immediate, meaning 10 minutes to within the hour, while “now, now, now” is the equivalent to “now” as we know it. I wish I could say I got over this but it still can be incredibly frustrating. Time just moves slower here.
Unfortunately, in the blogosphere, time is warp-engaged. I looked over some of the best of lists and was totally snowed under by the sheer volume of acts and subgenres that had cropped up within a year of spotty and sporadic Internet accessibility in the past year and a half. Aaron Dilloway finally put out that solo album, Animal Collective put out a not-so-great record, Scott Walker released what is probably the best titled album of all time and there is a thing called “Vaporwave”. Neat. All of this is incredibly exciting and overwhelming. Looking at my Best Of list it is safe to say that I missed virtually ALL of TMT or Pitchfork’s bajillion best of records of the last year. I am glad that Crawf, Joey and Peter compensated for my lack of coolness.
These records probably wouldn’t have made it on my best-of list if I were writing about them in 2012. But still, they are glistening gems of aural satisfaction that I unearthed while perusing Tome’s unwieldy inbox. Enjoy.
xxxx
Superstorms
Superstorms
( Experimedia, 2012 )
For: Lawrence English, Insect Factory, Machinefabriek
Superstorms self-titled album has the most exciting and powerful album openers of this year. In an album that persuades the harsh, clipped, in-the-red flotsam of audio data into beautiful ambient pieces, the first ten seconds of “Part 1” encapsulate this push and pull dynamic of harshness and beauty better than any part of the album. It opens with that sound you get when you first plug a guitar into the amp. That buzzing contact of metal-on-metal. That sound is isolated and then runs havoc over the top-bar, bleeding and getting its guts all over the place before it is pulled and massaged into the cavern-like drone mawing underneath. Superstorms maestro Michael Tolan keeps this harsh/pretty conceit up quite well during the 30+ minute album with crushed-bit, discarded sounds gently dying in the arms of angelic vocal drones, or buried synthesizers and acoustic guitar bits floating just below the surface. In an uncrowded ambient/drone year for me this is an easy shoe-in for one of the best. Plus, it was mastered by James Plotkin. Can’t really go wrong there.
...
The Miami
Ring Shouts
( Prison Art, 2012 )
For: Bonnie Prince Billy, Inca Ore, Grouper
Ring Shouts is at its best when at its most heart-wrenching, which, weirdly enough on an album full of overwrought and emotive vocals, comes in the aching, arching drones that underpin the entire thing. So, let’s address the obvious: The voice. If you ever went through a Bright Eyes phase you probably bought or listened to A Collection of Songs… which was a record full of early 4-track recordings that probably should have never seen the light of day. It was in those embarrassingly histrionic confessions that you probably heard yourself in if you had the guts to wring out your 14 year old heart into a tape machine and the subsequent balls/ego to package that thing and sell it on the open market. In The Miami’s marble-mouthed, way over-emoting vocals you get whisps of the same eavesdropping on a confessional style embarrassment you got from Conor Oberest on tracks like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Barbed Wire.” But here is the crucial difference:
One, the tracks are totally interesting musically. The Miami pulls in harshed-but-beautiful drones on acoustic tracks like the aforementioned “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” absolutely heartbreaking Grouper-like acoustic downer-drones on the first half of “Motherless Child” and the purely instrumental, heavy drone “New Design.” This is the real emotional heft of the album.
Two: This is some heavy shit. Where Oberest sang about the angst of adolescence, Ring Shouts tackles the Civil War. Yeah, that one. Using poems, song-cycles and some seriously heavy imagery, the over-emoting, fragile voice is perfectly justified in cracking a little bit when putting a Paul Robeson hymn to music. This album takes way more guts to release than Oberest ever had. Prison Art has never failed to impress me with their records.
...
Pousse Mort
Elevator
( ?, 2012 )
For: Kevin Drumm, Throbbing Gristle, 3:33
Death Grips. Amirite? People acting like hip-hop and noise have never hooked up in the back of a sweaty, super-seedy nightclub. The enigmatic Pousse Mort takes propulsive, simplistic drum machine programs and filters them through Sheer Hellish Miasma-harsh noise and vitriol. Beats are mangled, drug kicking and screaming well above the red, blown out and then blown across aural sandpaper. Everything is frayed at the edges and every beat sounds like steel-on-steel. Elevator can spend too much time in either camp, crafting low-key instrumental hip-hop with breaths of harsh noise on “Excavation” and total out-noise on “Breath of Steel.” Elevator hits its rear-view mirror-shaking, deafening sweet spot when those two camps meet on the field of battle like on the brilliant and irrevocable “D.I.G” or “Pushmore.” This hip-hop/noise thing has set my heart racing ever since I heard Dälek’s Abandoned Language. Pousse Mort takes that style to its next logical extreme.
Byline: the elements align for magical chao (((Disclaimer: Actual item will have different cover art than shown)))
This GUY! ! ! can paint some severely vivid noise portraits. I am ridiculously lucky & honored to have ordered this one-off tape in Rainbow Bridge's Manifesting Geographical Energy series. I have to admit I have previously heard only a handful of the numerous Pregnant Spore / Justin Marc Lloyd releases (and mostly from 2011), but this is by far the most engaging listen I have witnessed thus far. Overall, there are a couple pitch techniques reminiscent of a Jeff Astin / Housecraft projects, but with the earthy roar of 905 Tapes.
Side A ("untitled"): I guess I’ll just spit it like I hear it. So there are these two giant rubber bumblebees, right? They’re rubbing their butts together something obscene, then the queen starts screaming at them cos it’s totally unnatural, of course. They try it again, and the queen catches them again! WHO'S HAVING FUN AROUND HERE! STOP IT THIS INSTANT ~ with a harsh skree of feedback. This weird tableau loops... and you gradually gain an aural understanding of each pulsating sonic grain in the cycle. Some bizarre snippets of German speech and banjo pass by in the wings of the sonic field pitchfucked all awry. Fast forward and a repetitive clicking snaps to attention. Some kind of tap-dancing locust perhaps, skittering underfoot and devouring all crispy grains in sight? The high end chatter is counterbalanced by sludgy ripples of bludgeoned vocals. The ripples devolve into the uncanny, throaty purr of a 50-ton Chesire Cat. This glorious mess rolls and splutters in a shower of acrid sparks and grates to a halt to close out the A-side.
Side B(also "untitled"): All this sets up for a surprise entrance on the flip for.... hm….WHAT? a keyboard melody? But also damaged in character. Enter the swirling cacophony of a heart bursting into light and dark matter from the center of a quasar. Sine waves howl at the injustice of their erratic existence. ∞ implodes into orange and purple blotches. A giant baby plunks out its first notes on the cosmic keyboard. Vast plumes of tone billow out, one on top of the other, streaming out into nothing. The locusts click anxiously on the sidelines. Shadows and light dance to play the song in some vaguely major key. And yes, I do think it has songlike qualities. Even while oscillators squeal in contemplative apocalypse as they are tortured by Mr. Lloyd. The whole universe shrieks in ecstasy. The locusts return to feed. TL;DR? This tape shreds, and it isn't going to leave my deck for a while. Also, enjoy the free download.
I would strongly recommend you order one of these or other tapes offered at the Rainbow Bridge Shop or Distro. There is also a bevy of downloads of OOP releases available on the Pregnant Spore Bandcamp.
Byline: The gloomy doom-folk duo returns to finish what they started with an epic conclusion
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever review anything for the Tome that is from 2013. This is getting a little cliché by now (at least in my head), but I am still catching up from the ridiculous greatness that was last year. And it's March now, of this year. Livin' in the past, man, yikes. But these things, they take time don't they, and with a record like this one, time is of the essential essence — not one to be rushed by any means. And also, this series of records feels like it exists in an infinite past anyway, so... that works too, right? But I had to give this one a little love on the Tome here, because it comes from Patrick Holbrook and Rebecca Schoenecker's incredible Hairy Spider Legs imprint, you know, the one that focuses on folk-twinged weirdness and exclusively gorgeous vinyl releases. I also wanted to give this one a little coverage because I feel like it flew under a lot of peoples' radars. Spires that in the Sunset Rise (epic name for an epic sounding band, naturally), the lovely ladies who comprise this drone-doom-folk duo, did not exactly go unnoticed as the first installment of the Ancient Patience... saga got plenty of reviews (including one that I wrote previously here), even charming Foxy Digitalis writer Nicholas Zettel to list it as one of his favorite album of 2012. So here we have the largely ignored, but incredibly thrilling conclusion to the series of albums, which somehow manages to miraculously out-do its predecessor with a simultaneously foreboding and fulfilling coda.
While i'm not sure I'm qualified to give this thing a full analysis in terms of theme, plot, character, etc., I can safely say that the two albums are definitely sonically related at the very least, and I can also say that they definitely belong to the same overall narrative. Part II again features a lot of the same instruments (and a few more, if I'm not mistaken), a series of slow-brooding folk tunes that feel like they're wilting at the same time they're coming into full bloom — plucked strings gallavanting along chansons that seem pitifully optimistic while actually jailed in their cells of minor modes and infinite sorrow. Added to that, the overall fidelity across both albums is cinematic, maybe even theatrical, giving this obviously studiously recorded and edited set of works an open, live, and happening sort of feel. Still, there are a lot of little differences to the overall make-up of Part II that set it apart, the band relying much more on extra-musical elements for added intrigue and general suspense, notably the prominent use of sampled elements. Also, the voices here play somewhat of a different role at times, singing out the lyrics beautifully where written (as expected), but also guiding the music through odd detours of random "mawwwahhuu" sounds amidst prickly pickings at strings to further exemplify the record's cold, haunted feel. No matter how full things get, the listener, especially with some nice headphones on, can't help but feel desperately alone in a room full of spirits, and this feeling is very real during these noisier elements, but also felt in the songs themselves.
And the songs: they're just a little better, overall. "Smoke" has a "Dead Man" sort of vibe to it, a repetive raga of the neo-folk variety, and the bowed cellos that underly this record's drones feel especially pregnant with... just more. That is, they become more over time, as in the closing number "Revella" which has a very creepy inertia to it, slowly sneaking in textures and filling out the drone's epic harmony with a grace that spells sheer doom until the entire things halts with a dramatic hush, making way for guitars to bridge the composition into it's real "song" state. And that's really what I love most about this band, and what I discovered upon falling so warily into the second part of their series: Just how interesting the group is able to arrange the parts of their compositions, embellish musical narrative and remember that all music must be a ticket to somewhere, a journey. While I'm certain there is plenty to unpack that I haven't yet about this album (the lyric sheet itself is beautiful and fascinating in its own right - worthy of an essay on its own), I feel like it's not so important for me to try and dig all that stuff up here in this little review. My goal was to get people interested in completing their collection of these Ancient Patience... recordings by tossing a few bucks into Hairy Spider Legs account, then sitting at home on a cold evening, sipping some hot chocolate or tea perhaps (if you need something to comfort you, and you might), and peeking into the misty, mystical world of Spires that in the Sunset Rise.
Byline: Stuck inside of Oulu with the Finnish summer blues again
One of my good friends recently described to me a moment he had with his son in which his son hurriedly removed a cartridge from the Super Nintendo and the screen got stuck on a glitched loop. It might have looked something like this. He described it as being quite beautiful and wished he had recorded it. Finding beauty in accidents like that is a wonderful thing. The painter Francis Bacon once said that “I want a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance.” On Olli Aarni’s most recent release he does just that in composing layers of found, performed, and invented sounds into an album that in some ways seems like it came about “by chance.”
Aarni’s appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of found sounds is clear immediately after reading the brief liner notes of Pohjoisen kesä, in which he lists the fuzz from an FM radio as the first element:
10.6-7.7.2012
Oulu, Helsinki & Tallinn
FM radio, wine glass, tapes, etc.
Recorded with one hand
I recently corresponded with Olli about the process of making this tape. He started by describing a skateboarding accident that broke his hand and left him without much to do and an obtrusive plaster cast. Olli said, “I decided to travel North to my hometown to hang out with my friends and family and I packed a very minimal setup of musical equipment in my backpack. I recorded sounds from the radio to old tapes and started to form a piece of music out of them. I also tuned a crystal wine glass with water and played that. Most of this record was made on my parents' front porch when the weather was nice (it was an especially cold and rainy summer). In the end of the month I played this stuff live in Helsinki and Tallinn and I recorded the shows and used little bits of that in the final mix. The record was basically completed from beginning to end during the three weeks I had the cast on, which is exceptionally fast way of working for me, but I felt it had to be done like this. In the final mix-down I was able to use both hands.” He went on to say that the album could be compared to his experience of “watching the short and much awaited summer from outside, the certain melancholy of the beautiful summer surrounding you but not knowing what to make of it.”
At times while listening to Pohjoisen kesä (which translates to “Northern Summer”) I start to imagine that my plastic walkman is expanding – taking both reels of the cassette and spreading them farther and farther apart while it is playing. The tape sounds like it is being stretched so thin it is barely holding together. You can hear the faint wind and rain from that “Northern Summer” dissolve into soft warm synth tones on one side of the tape. The reverse side is even less distinct, primarily made up of a long grainy drone with what sounds like overlays of that tuned crystal wine glass. Each composition decays and warbles as the ambience gathers from one spool to the next, flowing across a 15-minute, sidelong grainy murmur until blissfully fading out.
Enjoy the download - I’d also recommend picking up his recent Avant Archive release, which is available both digitally and physically on cassette. Thanks, Olli.
Hardly Art contacted us forever ago to see if we would be interested in interviewing Jarrod Quarrell regarding his new project, Lost Animal. I picked up the album, gave it a few spins. And… interested? Yes. Very. Ex Tropical is full of lush instrumentations with surreal, lucid-dreaming lyrics that are delivered in a brave, first-thought-best-thought style from Quarrell’s brain to tape. Quarrell was in his native Australia, me in Africa. Through the magic of the internets we were able to conduct an interview that got near the heart of this music and his heroically isolating writing style.
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The TOME: This is the Tome’s first introduction with Lost Animal. If we were on a speed date (do you have speed dating in Australia?) what would you tell us about yourself to woo us?
Lost Animal: From all reports, I give great fellatio.
Ok. Now that our curiosity is piqued, tell us a little a bit about your new project Lost Animal. From what I can gather from the interwebs your band St. Helens broke up and now you have this. ...This. Would you be offended if I said that this is a weird record? Not weird in a bad way. There is a lot going on here. Musically it is a pretty breezy, balmy affair with ample amounts of references to post-punk’s obsession with dub/dancehall/reggae. Really pretty stuff. But lyrically it takes some dark turns. Killers, car jackers, kidnappers, lost love, etc… Are these two elements at odds with each other as part of a conscious decision? How did the writing of this album take place?
A lot of people have said similar things, like it shouldn't work but it does. I didn't think about anything like that. I was just following my instinct. It was natural. I wrote most of it straight to tape. Improvising. Most of the words were never written down. I just improvise to tape. It's remarkable what pops out sometimes, whole verses. It's beyond conscious thought. That's the best way to write, that's the ideal.
Your recording process sounds similar to Lil Wayne's, minus the copious amounts of cough syrup. You describe these lyrics and lines coming out "beyond conscious thought." Where do you think they come from?
Ha. Yeah I guess it's similar to what I've seen him do in The Carter doco. Why bother with cough syrup when there's stuff like Heroin? Lightweight. I guess they come from being open to whatever is flowing through you. From where? I can't say.
Do you start with lyrical motifs at all, or is it purely off the cuff?
No. The riff comes first, then a phonetic melody line and then the words.
Does this improvised songwriting involve a lot of editing, or do you view your first takes as the purest expression?
There's some editing. Often whole verses will just fall out of my mouth and I'll stick with it, other times I'll spend a bit of time replacing the sounds with proper or better words.
The lyrics seem to be circling a central motif. Would you care to spell that
out for us or do we have to be astute music listeners and make our own
conclusions? If so could you throw us some pointers? In another related
question, would you consider this a concept album?
It's a very sunny sounding break up album.
Keeping on this dark streak (I am sure you are pretty sick of this), is Australia a pretty easy place to be depressed? Am I wrong to assume that all of that sunshine must make it difficult to write sad music? I mean Ben Frost had to go to Iceland to create something truly menacing. But then again… Nick Cave. Warren Ellis. Kylie Minogue. Yikes. That is some heavy shit.
Melbourne is very cold in winter, we certainly don't suffer from too much sun. Remember, we're not far from the bottom of the world. I'm not a dark guy really, day to day. I do have a history of long periods of depression unfortunately. To me, making music is a victory over all of that.
Turning away from lyrical content, what musical influences went into writing
this? I see Grace Jones thrown around a lot. To what extent did that kind of
tropical, proto-disco stuff inform this record?
I've never really listened to Grace Jones, though I enjoy what I do know of her stuff. She's certainly not an influence though. Nor is proto-disco. What is that? I wasn't trying to write a 'tropical' record. The title may be misleading. "Ex Tropical" is a personal reference in that I used to live in the tropics, thus I'm ex tropical. It's not a reference to a genre. I just didn't limit myself with the instrumentation. If it sounded right, it was right.
I hear a lot of Joy Division on songs like “Greylands.” In fact, I hear a lot of early post-punk luminaries on these tracks: PiL, This Heat, The Clash’s Sandinista! Was this era of music where English punk rockers looked to tropical music, an inspiration?
Not really, no. Maybe subconsciously. After all, I have the entire history of music in my head, stuff just bubbles up. I never think of referencing certain bands when I'm writing. During recording sometimes it's easier to say "Oh, I want the guitar to sound like this" as a reference for the engineer.
Ex Tropical is very interesting musically, however, it seems that you are approaching the record from a songwriter’s point of view — trying to express a story. Does Lost Animal’s songwriting side ever get to a place where musically you cannot go? Or, are words, thoughts, ideas, confessions always subservient to beat and melody? Is there a lot that couldn’t get crammed onto this record? How much is there on your cutting room floor?
It's all about the songs. I'm not an electronic musician, I'm a songwriter. Words are subservient to melody. Music comes first and the words just appear. There was only one song left off the album. We didn't finish it. It's the start point for what comes next.
You said you are a songwriter over an electronic musician. What goes into the decision to match certain sounds with your words? Is that process as improvised?
We get called an electronic duo sometimes, which I find amusing. I feel like with electronic music that the gear used plays a big part in the composition. I just write on a piano/keyboard or a guitar, though sometimes with a beat beneath it. The sounds I choose have more to do with matching them to the sound I've written with. I have a bunch of favorite instruments but I do experiment and go with whatever feels/sounds right. Whatever works.
Is a made up mind really a killer like you said, or does this just allow us to prolong adolescence?
I think a made up mind is a killer. If you stop learning, stop changing, to me you're dead. I think an unmade up mind is more likely to prolong your adolescence.
So, I recently lost pretty much all of my music (hard drive got eaten somewhere in my parent-in-law’s house since I have been in Africa and all my physical media is in an attic somewhere). What are five essential albums I should buy immediately when I get back to the states?
Shit. I hate questions like this. Infinite possibilities. In no particular order:
East Of The River Nile - Augustus Pablo.
Heart Food - Judee Sill(of her two albums this wins out because of "The Kiss")
No Scandal, No Future, In Heaven - Panel Of Judges
Byline: Prolific Fort Collins-based Matthew Sage's most recent ambient/drone compositions on cassette.
I’m pretty new to the whole tape scene. If there was a way to Marty McFly myself back to the mid-90s, I’m sure the last thing my teenage self would expect to hear is that I would still be buying cassettes in 2013. Sure there’s a nostalgia factor, but I think the appeal of the format goes beyond that. In some ways, cassettes have a lot of the same appeal to me that I find in drawing. Drawing is typically a personal, immediate, and usually low cost medium. There’s nowhere near the degree of material preparation one might have with a painting. In some of the same ways, home-made lo-fi cassettes exemplify an imperfect, direct, and personal medium.
If a lot of recent cassettes fall into the “bedroom pop” category, I might compare the new M. Sage recording to “bunker pop.” While listening to this new tape from him on Moon Glyph, I keep imagining it as a soundtrack to a Cold War bunker scene. Through the layered grain one can hear what sounds like a distorted and muffled Obama speech about Colorado (home to Mr. Sage). It is as if a lone survivalist was spinning the shortwave radio dial back and forth until a faint pronouncement could be heard through the static. Just as soon as it arrives, the speech recedes back into the dense soundscapes that M. Sage does so well. A lot of the song titles to these soundscapes help me further envision the scene; “Radio slope (for Whitcomb)” certainly brings to mind AM radio used on a couple of the tracks, while “Fuji Station: Confines of Time” might be referencing the brutalist, Cold War era architecture of the Japanese train station. “Campaign Cycles/Harrowing Straights” most likely is in reference to the election season during which M. Sage made these recordings (October of 2012).
M. Sage has been busy lately. Last year he put out the excellent Into the World/Long Peace double EP which was one of Pete’s favorites of 2012 (and my own as well). Soon after, M. Sage follwed up the EP with the dynamic full length Lux Collapsing. This year, his first release continues to reinforce his exceptional reputation. You can get a copy here, and visit his Fort Collins-based label Patient Soundshere.
For: Jürgen Müller, Aphid Palisades, M. Geddes Gengras
Byline: Imagine the aurora borealis, but underwater.
The cool thing about Nodolby is, he makes pretty much whatever the heck he wants. His tapes on Stunned, D’Artagnan, and 905 Tapes, along with the split with Pregnant Spore all suggest a noise head is at work. But make no bones about it, this tape is a smooth synth jam. Imagine the aurora borealis, but underwater. On Inception/Aftermath, Nodolby constructs a giant sonic plexiglass prism, fills it and lights it up for us to hear this impossible marvel. Starting off with an unassuming ‘pedal point’ (using the term loosely, but the effect is similar), soon higher pitched delayed streams of gurbles and a farfisa-esque synth enter the field. These foreground elements are framed by (what sounds like) faint screeching of strings passing through momentarily. The raw materials are humble, appearing to be mostly sine waves compressed, delayed, arpeggiated and filtered in various ways. A constant, insistent set of tones pulse under multiple filters as a strobe, providing the listener a rhythmic context, although I would hesitate to call it a countable meter of any sort. The crazy thing is, you can still tap your foot to it!
Aftermath takes the adventure a step further, emerging into the atmosphere. The mood is more tranquil and less ecstatic than the A side. Space opens up to reveal lights from a distance on a lonely landscape. It proceeds from test tones revolving around a nasal lead and other broken square wave compatriots, to some daring stretches towards polytonality when an arpeggiated synth appears to march to a different key (if it could be said to be constrained by a key at all after the notes are slightly melted and blurred with pitch effects). These blotches are slashed by the occasional razor thin synth, which sounds to be emulating the rattling of strings against a fretboard.
The Nodolby moniker has never been more appropriate than for this particular effort, as the recording is unbelievably pristine and full of high-end shimmer. In other words, you would be well advised to turn the Dolby filter off on this doozy to let the upper registers ring free and clear. There is no need to worry about unpleasant buzzing and hissing intruders. Arresting on first listen, yet with plenty of secrets to plumb on subsequent listens, Inception / Aftermath is a unique treat among the treasures of 2012, kosmiche synth avalanche notwithstanding.
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Your recording process sounds similar to Lil Wayne's, minus the copious amounts of cough syrup. You describe these lyrics and lines coming out "beyond conscious thought." Where do you think they come from?
I hear a lot of Joy Division on songs like “Greylands.” In fact, I hear a lot of early post-punk luminaries on these tracks: PiL, This Heat, The Clash’s Sandinista! Was this era of music where English punk rockers looked to tropical music, an inspiration?
