>>> Key
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:: This collection of 23 tracks on two discs were derived in 1997 and
2003 and sweetly open with a young Mia Farrow crooning to the
soundtrack to something that was probably originally filmed in
Technicolor. There’s plenty of meaty bassline feedback, chugging
percussion and a re-release of material originally released to friends
only (in an edition of 7!!). Austria’s Mego always seems to bring out
the most prolific of any artists’ work, and this no exception, shows
off Mr. Pavlov’s penchant for real down and dirty physical sound.
Post-Pop is also somewhat elusive, in that it’s edginess seems
faded, mysterious. There’s a collected chaos here, beats that just
via happenstance seem to pop and present themselves. But, like his
earlier works on Raster-Noton this shakes and vibrates with a spine
made of mechanical profundity. Take, for instance, the simplicity of
the beat-laden “Post-Pop Reprise” where something disturbingly similar
to what The Crystal Method was playing with around the same time but
turned into half-assed poptronics as the contracted help of the music
industry’s hype machine. Not since Before and After Science have I
heard something as radically forward-thinking as some of what COH
develops throughout Post-Pop – but what makes it so interesting is
that he is still working out the kinks, and they are a plenty, but
that’s its engine. Even when he slows the pace to a sweet buzz in
“Starlust” there’s an itchy need to just get up and explore the finer
things you take for granted, like every single hair follicle on your
entire body. This is real trance music, not “trance” as itemized at
your local record roto-tiller, but mind-bending vibe-making at its nth
degree. This IS Post-Pop.
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:: Three simultaneously released EP’s that are really something of a
trilogy. Once again, packaged elegantly in fold-out sleeve folders,
the size of a greeting card with a practical and clean-line die cut
that makes retrieval of the sounds inside at a fingers touch. It’s
more physics from Carsten Nicolai, but here there seems to be a
greater depth of independence from the pure physics of his linear
sound, and a concentration on the asymmetry of pitter-patter
microgrooves, following up on his amazing live work. With sixteen
tracks in all, Transrapid is the first release in the set and
kicking off with “Funkbugfx” couldn’t make the room fill up with warm
scattered notes more quickly. It’s like dropping an armful of
silverware in space, kling klang, indeed. The sizzling buzz is
hotwired. It’s a confident, bass-built sound from the ground up –
like some type of free-floating CAD design installation that you are
cast into. This is surely one for a full-on surround sound treatment.
And when it comes to tracks simply titled “Future” Nicolai doesn’t
casually paste faux imagery for the fad expectant, he delves into the
coarse innards of every curvilinear angle and turnabout presenting
something of an organic architecture tested for stealth ears willing
or not to accept the fact that cultural plasticity has outgrown us
humans. By including tracks ranging in timing from :16 to 8 minutes+
he knows that even the scraps, the sources, the edits are essential to
making sounds that layer together those slices in between matter,
finding a rightful home when honed from scratch. Tracks like
“F117.Tiff” just propel and sputter with an astute assumed sense of
gravity. The sense that what you hear is in the fourth dimension is
uncanny. If the original Planet of the Apes film were made so
machines took over the planet, rather than chimps, it would sound like
some of what is proposed on these new works. With a nod to some the
drums and wires of early 80s synth pop, the work expands upon some of
the rhythm nation of yore and contracts only every other note, cuts
and filters it, adding only essential structures and no frilly
fillers. Along with the accompanying esoteric essays written for each
of these three discs, Nicolai has composed the most symbiotically
formatted work to date.
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:: Weary, faded grooves with Angele David-Guillou’s sweet, paced vocal is
some illusory crossbreed of Massive Attack and a dreamy Tanya
Donnelly. These short spoken urban stories are partly deadpan, partly
groovy nighttime lore. Prodding and provocative, you can hear every
breathy wisp from the wordsmith’s lips. Composed of only four
pop-length tracks (each under 5 minutes) this is a great sampler to
the world of Piano Magic, yet, also their most dramatically digital.
It’s poetic, and journalistic, but even at its most barely audible
there is something dramatically interesting going on in the fore and
background. “This Heart’s Machinery” evokes a dim gin martini night
with the pale glimmer of a crescent moon. It’s a pretty thing.
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:: The second terr(or)ific installment of Thighpaulsandra’s Double
Vulgar is a distorted, sadistic rock opera for a handful of players
with a penchant for toying with dominance by way of the simpler things
in life. It’s a psychoanalytic distortion of childhood fears with a
glaze of homoerotica that spices it up nicely. But in our real world
of predators and polysexualism, Thigh goes just under the limbo
accommodated line by not going as much for shock, but the curled
lipped theories of how one would get there step-by-step. Double
Vulgar II burps and blurts its belligerently broken diatribes as a
bevy of horny whirligigs spin and dizzy the listener. The coverart’s
“offering” makes the main character in this play prematurely sabotage
his own halo for an earnest spit-in-the-face self
(indulgent)-portrait. But that is part of his shtick, and that sells
records. Though, the content speaks far-reaching volumes of a man in
dire need to shed layers of pain, confusion, and the lack-lustre
reality of the shelf-life of relationships. Each nearly 10-15 minute
vignette here courts a varying tempo of self-absorbed need to be for
each of its characters, including the narrator (assumedly
Thighpaulsandra himself), a grande dame school marm, and an incredible
underbelly of jazz bass and percussion, not to mention the living
organ. The scraping of strings, the drone of chords, the barest of
syncopated drumming, at times parodying a circus tympani – its all in
good pain. If I were him, I’d huck a louie as far as the edge of the
sea.
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::
The falsetto, shy, maudlin waver spun from Antony’s lips is something
of an anomaly in the universe. What sets this collective apart from
the same-old, aside from the drag and pose, is the real ambitious
emotion in the wind of the words, like an encapsulation of faded
histories that marked the aura of Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, and
even Johnny Cash. “For Today I Am A Boy” reflects the coming of age
of gender realization. The piano is striking and strains the
heartstrings of calloused ears as Spring breaks. This time out new
Midwest imprint Secretly Canadian captures the New York performance
artists from the ever changing face of the mysterious Durtro with its
ties to the all but vanished World Serpent and its exquisitely artful
roster. Here with the queer vocal help of (the eerily channeling
Willie Nelson sounding alike) Rufus Wainwright (“What Can I Do?”), Boy
George (on a wrenching solidaristic “You Are My Sister”) and even a
looser-throated Lou Reed making guest appearances on these short gems
about lost innocence and various laments. Horns a plenty, “Fistful of
Love” is modern vaudeville derived in part from a Marc Almond poem
that croons out lipstick smeared nights and smoky afternoons at a
whisky bar where a bald drag queen sits alone staring at an empty
small stage to a Robert Palmeresque chick-beat. But the lost, wild
eyed birdy voice has big cahones and a held back gutterball wail ready
to burst throughout here. But he breathes and holds back, taking
mystery to bed.
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:: “When I was nine I didn’t want to turn ten because I didn’t want to
grow up.” Benge (aka Ben Edwards) takes no time to smooth out the
bite of his child’s tale. In many ways I Am 9 strikes me as an
ambient party mix, some of the best chill this side of Anchorage.
Playing with department store tones, the slo-mo-glow of “Panhard”
mesmerizes in few BPM’s, but a thick glaze of ‘pop’. Throughout there
are some signature sounds such as the tennis ping replicated on
“Facel3.” All the while the mood is ultra cool, even taking some very
obvious lessons from latter day Bjork’s Matmos on the winding, chiming
“Zeta” with is reverse balloon twists and bloated deliberate rock.
All hesitations aside, the atmosphere is marvelously tight, planed,
plotted and a bit of a sleeper.
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:: Last Light wades in pastel washes, drifting through the barrier of
gravity. Lundvall’s records always have something that could be
described as a seasonal feel, this no exception as deep Winter sets
in, frozen, frightened. The mastering by his kin, Kurt Lundvall, is
pretty flawless and presents a mystical, sprawling statement on tracks
like the draining “The Pond.” This disc evokes a more diary-like
approach, with lilting vocals that are dreamy and lost. These
whispers in the dark embody something akin to a loosely framed film
soundtrack. The tide rolls away in the faded darkness of a pale moon
clustered in fog sinking below the surface. Last Light is full of
echoes and reverb, making for an almost psychedelic listen. It’s
spiritual, aural massage.
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Essential Links ::
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Read more Microview’s ::
