Exactly half way through the album Yoni Wolf breaks the fourth wall and confidently sneers, “and I know saying all this in public should make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you’d never tell nobody”. It is hard to imagine mustering the apathy or the sincerity to say something like this after breathing …
IRAN – DISSOLVER Two things that everyone knows about Iran’s 2009 offering. 1) It sounds nothing like their lo-fi reverb drenched bedroom pop of years past. 2) Iran is the side project of Tv on the Radio’s Kyp Malone. These are two very important details that I did not know on the first spin. Without …
Finally, the Tome is bringing some noise. While the Tome output has mostly centered around some pretty quiet, pretty pretty bands and musicians, with Crawf’s last “Throne of Bone” post and the new High Castle EP, the Tome is about to be flooded with some long overdue ear canal destruction. Hailing from San Francisco, High …
I wonder if it’s THAT obvious already from my posts, but I’ll cut the crap and just be honest… I’m no metal-head. In truth, I’m probably the last guy who should be reviewing this CD. But hell (pun intended), I came across this disc when I stayed at Throne of Bone singer Mike Freiburger’s home, …
“Oulipo” is a term used to describe a collective of French authors, poets, artists, and mathematicians who use self-prescribed limitations to produce works of art within confining limitations. For example, authors will replace every noun in a piece with a noun seven entries later in a dictionary, or will write a story without using the …
I have no qualms about putting Menomena’s I am the Fun Blame Monster on my list for best records to come out in the 21st century. The contrast between experimentalism, tunesmanship, fun and moments of true emotional frailty and beauty are high marks that every young indie band should strive for. It was Brent Knopfs …
INKA UPENDO – “SURYA” The Helsinki-bred producer has crafted a track with “Surya” that dips in and out of several modes and traditions within electronic music like some kind of multi-storied dance club hosting multiple floors and chill out rooms. Ambient textures and tones are picked up and whisked off by a deconstructed acid house …
Centered around a beautifully shot induction of into a toxic world, the Icelandic duo’s curiously titled “Ro” (translated into calm), juxtapose beauty and dread into a minimalist composition that balances incidental sound with a fragile melody portending an end. Perhaps this video doesn’t just record an induction for our post-nature dystopia, but a baptism or …
VOYAGER II – “FALLING” The London duo comprising Voyager II dig deep into a lush world of live, jazz-influenced percussion, eroding samples, vocal drones and repetitive arpeggios to create a sound somewhere between El Ten Eleven and The Album Leaf. Elongated ambient passages are snapped into focus by the crack of a locked in snare, …
Danny Bracken’s Low Lumens project pulls from a very interesting time in electronic music when artists on labels like Morr in Germany and Mush in the States were incorporating organic instrumentation, ambient sound baths and finely attenuated melodic phrasings into their compositions. Bracken’s best work under Low Lumens pushes these tendencies into an even more …