>>> Key
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:: After several years of (er) silence, Mlehst (aka All Brentnall) releases A Puritan Am I alongside other older works (Living without Feeling, Pedantic/Pessimistic, etc) to be newly distributed on his new Belief Recordings label. The title cut starts with a simple conversation between a stretched out guitar line, strumming away rather patiently, intently, with an occasional bit of crevassed feedback crunch. The new work extends his lengthy career of secluded sounds of phobia and fantasy at its most diabolical ever. In essence what we have here is something of a discourse in schizophrenia. An ambient drone-based disc with the fusion of noisy gestures that throw you for a loop once you’ve settled. “Dance Ye a Merrie Jig” is anything but dancehall or house, in fact, it may not have a sense of space at all. Within this is something of a course bout of filtered textural frenzy. It’s the pollination of a soda bottle factory at full speed and the echoes of a few dozen simultaneously itchy fingers chalking up a board. After a while the chaos cools and that’s when the grand sound of Mlehst rings truest, in its blatant loss of primordial self-centeredness. There’s a full-bodied balance between the dichotomy of horizons he’s built atop each other here. The bookend piece, “Black ‘n’ White Minstrels” mirrors the title track perfectly, making for a threesome of extended works that coax your ears into a conceptual space of oneness. (Read TJ’s Mlehst Profile)
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:: Nineteen untitled tracks by Blir (aka SND’s Mark Fell and Mat Steel) that meld clearly into the roster of Raster (Noton). Harkening back to their beginnings, actually. Here we have spacey and undulating digital pop’n cracks that build sequentially into a funky low-brow rhythm. I believe these are edits of lengthier ideas, but even as a teaser this is a full palette of sonic pleasure. There are floating parts that start to pulse like an aortic monitor through the bent ears, of say, David Cronenberg while wearing an electro-stim tens unit. The wide, blatant beat tunnels down a path of fused wirings that eek out a wavering charge of sine waves. This disc floats evenly in the background of the sunny skies of July, only tweaking you with some repetitive tonal lifts now and then. Some of the material is a little bit clunky and chunky, but overall it has an iron heart, or is it a steel trap?
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:: Here we have a new emerging artist, a young IDM-based gal from the Ukraine named Katja Zavoloko in her debut, Plavyna (meaning silt). Though there is no grit here. It’s like you pulled the right lever in a casino – how spritefully refreshing and playful! I’m not sure if I would immediately charge the dancefloor, but I this certainly puts me in a mood filled with brightly colored geometrics and spent afterglow. Other than some Vert and Matmos, tracks like “Painted Berries” and “Mirror” puts this in a class unto itself. Swirly violations of fun pixie noise combines with something akin to miniature bagpipes and glassy percussion making for a crystal clear mix worthy of any electronic music-ophile. It’s noteworthy to mention that the mood flickers in and out of momentary hysteria and poppy bliss to haunting echoey trance and a variety of staccato, spine-tingling ripples. It’s like an icy breeze on your chest after you’ve dipped in water. Combining just the right amount of temperate experimentalism with birdlike rhythms this beat is most definitely “technotronic.”
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:: Jason Forrest, the artist formerly known as donnasummer, drops the moniker to unleash the antithesis of his former self. Fully grasping the most essential nut meat of hard rock quips he had only formerly reached for, he offers a handful of blazing, and stylish slapped together “cock rock disco” anyone could stomach. But this bellyful is really funky fresh, soothingly clever, despite its blatant highs and lows, which it rides upon. Mouse on Mars’ Andi Toma mixes the whole enchilada which includes more samples from more places that are clearly recognizable, sort of his signature, but I am hearing Blondie in there (“New Wave Folk Austerity”) I think. He has his way with the big arena guitar finale moment as “My 36 Favorite Punk Songs” starts up alongside the Ramones, X Ray Spex clips et al. But, Forrest only seems to weave these samples more expertly than ever on the craft that is “Shamelessly Exciting.” And not only for himself. For a change he adds the apt vocal of Laura Cantrell on “Nightclothes and Headphones” which works well in his cut-up mode having her pretty voice resemble a waterfall alongside a jangle of perky percussion and wavering rhythms. Herein he collaborates with Timeblind on the loungy New Year’s Eve pop of “Dreaming and Remembering,” with David Grubbs on the high edge rock lead cut “The Walls of the City Shake” and Maja Ratkje’s “Evil Doesn’t Exist Anymore” that has the best damn broken record ending this side of Texas, ala Chic and nasty mosquito guitar lines. And I don’t have to tell you have apropos a track called “Dust Never Settles” fits right in here, in fact, it would have made a better title for the disc, or maybe for a future retrospective of work! It’s a gravely groovy mix of sonic guitars and hazy sediment. And that’s how it goes.
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:: CMR, Auckland’s growing electronic label releases its eighth full-length, a live recording (cira 1998) by the defunct guitar and keyboard trio Lugosi (including members of Birchville Cat Motel and Sunship). The guitar strings become tightropes, taut and shivering in mid air. Like radar their attuned to fixed vibrations and subtle movements. A yielding cross between the warmth of an orchestral pit meets Sun Ra outtakes, this is not your usual live fare. The closest live sounds I’ve heard came out of a show by E.A.R. several years ago, certainly untamed trance and full-on inebriation at its finest. Dawn brings to mind the open harbor where a boat is being launched early in the morning. The overall flow of these half dozen merging and morphing tracks is full of breath, like the hollow of your belly at a nosebleed altitude. In just under one hour, they bend guitar sounds that soar along the surface – something quite settling, yet raising the blood temp a few notches. For a moment I envision the wounded walking back from war, another I am falling asleep in front of TV snow… the images projected here could be endless.
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:: How could you not want to flip something on called Rotten Cocktails? How rotten could they be? Would they be an acquired taste, tepid, exotic, unfamiliar? This Boy Robot is actually a duo made up of Hans Moller and Michael Zorn. The music is startlingly quirky from the start, like a florescent sour fruit punch that was shaken to a froth. I think I like it. Though it makes me think about why. With a jangly Eastern rhythm here and a Daft Punk wannabe elixir there (“We Accept All Our Parents Credit Cards” and “Super Scorer”) these boys partially rip off everybody, but knowingly with a level of finesse. Highrise lounge sounds for happy peeps to shimmy to all Summer long. Yes, it’s wispy and filled with beats at the same time sustained by its pop heart and voluntarily lost consciousness. There’s a blazing molten funkiness encrypted in every Rotten Cocktails mixer. “Live in Vanilla” is a contemporary twist on the lightness of strings that just tiptoes like a levitating hippo. Gravity should be something any good robot would command without hesitation, and here Boy Robot most certainly testify to the variety of actions built-in to satisfy any master control. Special thanks, Will Robinson!
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:: Movements is an instant lullaby. The oozing harmony goes right to the spine and launches throughout your entire physical network. Senses are ruled by the lush, melting ambient tones that pour ever so slowly from Koda’s scenic aural landscape. Quiet, unrestrained and wide in vision, M. Derrick seems to be creating something of a constellation where finer points are dotted at random encoded spots in a mass of air. It’s as poetically licensed as the liner notes that read “waiting for the shore, the tension was beautiful.” And with these movements, the sparkle of sunshine gently drifts to sea.
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:: Four tracks by Andras Katai (aka Floppy) with the ghetto industrial kicker “Wonderful” that speaks volumes about liberty in its current state in the virtual toilet. The spoken work “fuck yous” familiar, its beats are riveted, spelled metallic. The regurged Front 242’ish “Bastardo” tries a bit too hard to be kin to its lost uncles, and ends up wading in luke-warm amateurity. It’s bubbly and all, but it repeats too much of the filler heard on car chase soundtracks with an abundance of cheapy Moroder-riffs. “Dt. Hacker,” from Hig Density is way on to something as it slithers with a seedy drum line and stretched synth vibes that are bent and unbroken at their strong ends. Even with the addition of an unnecessary bassy, military background voice the track still grooves while attempting to offer a political cum synthetically altered subliminal message. And “Dr. Alien” faces front of the class with a warbly theremin-likeness and crunchy twists. So, while this is a bit half and half, the good half breaks the other, er, in half.
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:: Steve Davis and Tim Martin are Sovacusa who have created something quite undulating and pixilated that pops-up with a host of surprises. It’s an animated, hallucinated, willowy ride of technolicious ambience. Tracks like “Kinjito” purr like untamed felines unfurling their tails with a fat purr as a stuttering crackle of beats is laden beneath its ferocious circuitry. “Jira” skims the surface of bobbly, staccato breaks and cuts, but does so without many highs and lows, it’s pretty even throughout, a leveling. The floating ambient that is “s269” lingers like smoke rings, one after another, making for slight, polite pauses along the way. The tones are crisp and high, the bouncy premise is a winning format for Expanding Records which has the penchant for working with acts who create a playful sound that always entertains and isn’t something readily off the shelf. Centrepoint is blissful enough to get your body grooving, yet brainy enough to undermine your next move.
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:: In their second collaboration, this two disc set combines the circumference of
disparate talents confronting sound space withsurprising results. Autechre, masters
of the awkward beat and veiled, forward thinking experimentalism of The Hafler Trio
make strange bed fellows indeed. Though this packaged very similarly to many of
the former releases that are seemingly unauthorized by Phonometography(for
non-payment of royalties) the sounds project a far greater depth on aeo3. Its
sparse, cool ambient drone hovers remotely like the howling wind. It’s a
horizon line of quaking, trembling low-rise tonal texture just blowing around the
room. Because of the actual wind blowing through my apartment it was pleasantly
disturbing to try and differentiate from where the winds were actually being
passed. About half way in a tweaking, electrically charged static is introduced like a series of amped up vinyl pops and ticks. It’s a sputtering circle of gesticular
bravado that never launches into pure noise, but scratches the surface and then some.
On 3hae they pick up from where they left off though launch with a sort of free-fall, fairy tale ending and into a silent abyss before an almost miniature symphonic structure, with an awakening clang about five minutes in. What follows is prospectively more H30 than your normal smartly chopped up hi jinks of Autechre, though I can see how each of these artists have greatly influenced each
other within this collab. There are big wide aural passages stunted by abrupt ends. On this second disc it’s as though they are exploring more elementals – here, fire and gases from the earth. There’s something deep seated, a frothing mass of boiling dirt and dust that oozes into thin air. It’s as though you are listening to a field
recording of manholes being tested for explosives, it’s the testing, the plotting, the endurance of speculation that creeps all throughout this work. The miasma of tranquil vibrations are layered multiple times creating something of a warp speed shuttle launch pad. Calling all trons, bots and other digitizations… they come in piece(s)!
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Essential Links ::
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Read more Microview’s ::
11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
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