|
OCTOBER 2004
101. The Polyphonic Spree, Together We're Heavy (2004)
100. Growing, The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light (2004)
99. Agitated Radio Pilot, Like Flightless Birds (2004)
98. Peter Wright, Desolation Beauty Violence (2004)
97. Gang Gang Dance, self-titled (2004)
96. Asi Aso, Lavender Edition (2004)
95. Deathprod, self-titled (2004)
94. Le Tigre, Feminist Sweepstakes (2001)
review
93. Climax Golden Twins, Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered (2004)
review
92. Coil, Coil Vs. Elph
SEPTEMBER 2004
90. & 91. The Skygreen Leopards One Thousand Bird Ceremony (2003) & The Ivytree Winged Leaves (2004)
review
89. Various Artists, The Wire Tapper 6 (2000)
88. Various Artists, Faith and Power : An ESP-Disk Sampler (2002)
Jazz sampler compiled by The Wire.
87. Davis Redford Triad, The Mystical Path of the Number Eighty-Six (1997)
86. Various Artists, Radio Palestine : Sounds of the Eastern Mediterranean (2004, Sublime Frequencies)
85. Various Artists, I Remember Syria (2004, Sublime Frequencies)
84. Various Artists, Radio Java (2004, Sublime Frequencies)
83. Various Artists, Night Recordings from Bali (2004, Sublime Frequencies)
82. Various Artists, Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (2004, Sublime Frequencies)
81. Vibracathedral Orchestra, The Queen of Guess (2004)
Thanks to Darren.
80. Gogol Bordello, Multi Kontra Culti Vs. Irony (2002)
Thanks to Vingus.
79. Goldenball, The Luxury of Pause (2004)
Intricate studio-detailed pop operettas, most reminiscent of a tidier, less rambling Olivia Tremor Control, but occasionally evoking "Kilroy"-era Styx as well. Thanks to Vingus.
78. Bjork, Medulla (2004)
notes
77. Men In Fur, self-titled (2004)
Unutterably plaintive songs about life and love among the animals, from a band so sensitive they make Belle & Sebastian look like swaggering jocks. Thanks to Vingus.
76. Nautical Almanac, Rooting For the Microbes (2004)
A polymorphic mess of a recording, equal parts delightful and repellent, like the idea of playing with shit. The Nautical team seems to inhabit some libidinal nursery-school where experimentation, destruction, and play have collapsed into a single impulse: the only analog that readily suggests itself is the child who, while playing with recording equipment, screams as loud as they can into the microphone to investigate what happens.
75. Yoshio Machida, Hypernatural #2 (2001)
Sparse arrangements of ethnic instruments, field recordings, and occasional electronics, with light digital effects providing accent and color. The disc is mannered and somewhat tame: although it consistently evokes a generally pleasant meditative quality, the only really exemplary tracks are the two which feature the more daring contributions of cassette mnemotechnician Aki Onda.
74. z_e_l_l_e, rjctd::nw (2004)
z_e_l_l_e is an Italian duo making barely perceptible structures from filaments and crumbs. Anyone working with this sonic palette owes a debt to Ryoji Ikeda, but on this disc Ikeda's interests (the gestures of dance music, the sheer physicality of sound) are erased away, appearing only as the faintest of outlines. Microsound enthusiasts take note.
73. Various Artists, Tape / Operette : Opera Remixes (2004)
Tape's modest album Opera reworked, mostly beyond recognition, by a familiar stable of electroacoustic minimalists (Minamo, Anderegg) and a few surprise guests. Happily, the assembled team mostly steers clear of the dance beats, instead reducing the source material into sheets of colorful ambiance. Uniformly agreeable, although none of these tracks represent the strongest work by these contributors.
AUGUST 2004
72. Fourcolor, Water Mirror (2004)
Solo debut from Keiichi Sugimoto, featuring seven tracks of processed guitar patterns and thin noise. On this disc Sugimoto never manages to fully invoke the teeming garden so ably generated by his collaborative work with groups like Fonica and Minamo, but this is still a fine disc for ambient guitar fans: it's closest in spirit to recent work by Keith Fullerton Whitman or Chris Willits' "folded guitar" pieces.
71. Black Dice, Creature Comforts (2004)
Black Dice's 2002 release Beaches and Canyons isn't exactly structured, but it still managed to get it together enough to occasionally head into the weird outlands. By contrast, this new disc is so fucked up that it can't even manage to leave its apartment. Instead it hunches in the living room, cobbling guitar, loops, beats, and noise into a set of eight merz-constructions: ugly, but endowed with a certain ramshackle appeal.
70. Islaja, Meritie (2004)
Islaja appears to be channeling the same kind of dryadic energy that possesses someone like Fursaxa's Tara Burke, only where Burke's haunted songscapes are electrified and urban-dark, Islaja's are acoustic and sun-dappled. On Fonal, a label documenting an intriguing vein of psychedelic folk emerging from Finland.
69. Kayo Dot, Choirs of the Eye (2003)
Chamber-rock, with its moody arrangements, sometimes taps into the same strain of Romantic pomp that Metal has been mining for years, so marrying the two into a brooding art music seems at least theoretically viable. As realized here, however, Metal has never sounded more mannered and impotent. Each of the five long tracks that compose this suite end up stranded in a aimless, mid-tempo mire: quasi-goth power ballads without the hooks.
68. Sleep, Dopesmoker (2003)
A low-frequency mix of 1999's Jerusalem, Dopesmoker predominantly consists of a single track of mirthless Sabbath dirge-rock. This track makes an absolute renunciation of anything other than the primal ur-dynamic it stakes out in its opening minutes: although the piece lasts over an hour, it shows no desire to develop or complexify, only to go on existing, trudging to nowhere. Awesome in its leviathan pointlessness.
67. Traveling Bell, Lullaby For Strangers (2004)
Solo project of Kathleen Baird, of Spires That In the Sunset Rise. These tracks inhabit the same gloomy attic-universe that the Spires have staked out so well, although (as befits a solo project), they stroll waywardly around the mouldering edges of that universe, rather than plunging foursquare into its delirious maw the way the full quartet does. Piano, acoustic guitar, harmonium, music box, butterfly dust.
66. Michael Yonkers, ...Practicing... (2004)
A CD-R of 22 songlets by fuzz-rock ancestor Michael Yonkers, best known for his suppressed 1968 album Microminiature Love. The impassioned grandpa's croak of Yonkers' vocals takes some getting used to, but his roaring overdriven guitar still takes all that's good about garage-rock, punk, and the electric blues and condenses it into heady sludge.
65. Dielectric Minimalist All-Stars, [I!] (2004)
Turntablist Drew Webster, improv drummer Jason Levis, and Cagean romantic Loren Chasse, musicians who had not previously worked together, join up and produce a double album of intriguing collaborations. The unusual grouping of personnel from disparate fields helps this disc find eclectic approaches to electroacoustic dronework: each track finds the trio jerry-rigging some strange new strategy, yielding a glassy web of astral noise at one turn, and a reverb-drenched tick-tock at the next. Consistently interesting, although also slightly cold--the ragged charm that I've come to associate with Chasse's projects is absent here, replaced with a cerebral, vaguely alien quality.
64. Coelacanth, Mud Wall (2004)
This disc, the third collaboration between pantheistic texture-collector Loren Chasse and entropy scholar Jim Haynes, discovers a heretofore unknown middle ground between the field recording and the long-form drone. A murmuring, trickling assemblage of mysterious ambiences. Recommended.
63. The Child Readers, Memory and Fantasy (2004)
Strange release integrating field recordings and snippets of conversation into dreamy, acoustic song-sketches. The scrapbook character and unfinished feel of this release make it a kind of kin to a disc like Songs From the Black Mountain Music Project, although the Readers completely bypass Mirah & co.'s indie-pop terrain, striking out instead for hazier, more narcotic territories...
62. My Cat Is An Alien, The Cosmological Eye Trilogy, Part Two : Into the Sombrero Galaxy (2004)
Using a sparse palette of reverb, guitar feedback, and occasional percussion, the Opalio brothers imagine a soundtrack to deep space's nebulaic murkiness. The results are mixed: for every panorama that emerges beautifully from the vastness, there's another that collapses into stagnation. Nevertheless this disc remains a striking document of a brave new aesthetic: call it Cosmic Minimalism...
JULY 2004
61. Kevin Drumm, Sheer Hellish Miasma (2002)
Don't let the ominous title and packaging fool you: Drumm has more in mind than simple menace. The album is not without its moments of aleatoric scouring, but it's less interested in merely brutalizing and more interested in noise-as-transcendence, getting to the Kirbyesque negative-energy being that stands revealed when the ego gets shredded away. Overdriven, oceanic drones. Recommended.
60. Pelt, 3.5.04: A Capsized Moment, Paris (2004)
CD-R documenting a live performance by drone collective Pelt, who grow ever more assured and complete.
59. The Skaters, Dark Rye Bread (2004)
Hallucinatory noise, electronic blare, drumming and chanting: the Skaters reopen the vein of black psychedelic fire discovered by the Taj Mahal Travelers in 1971 then lost to humanity. Muddy, hypnotic, this is the music that you'd imagine a group of post-apocalyptic mushroom-gobbling animists squatting in the ruins of a recording studio might produce. A startlingly provocative debut; highly recommended.
57. & 58. Jack Rose, Raag Manifestos (2004) & Two Originals Of... (2004)
Jack Rose, of Pelt, issues up two discs showcasing his Takoma-style work on the acoustic guitar. Alternately light-footed and grave, these mercurial albums tap into and carry on a rich tradition of American guitar. Highly recommended.
56. Various Artists, Pasture Music Festival and Jubilee (2004)
High-quality two-disc compilation given to attendees of the Pasture Festival. Works both as an overview of the national free-folk scene and a primer on Madison-area experimental acts.
55. Sunn O))), White2 (2004)
The heavy stench of doom now in audio form. The iTunes Gracenote database, in one of its occasional moments of humor, informs me that this album is a "soundtrack." The soundtrack to the Kali-Yuga, maybe?
54. Mouse on Mars, Radical Connector (2004)
This review slated to appear elsewhere.
JUNE 2004
53. Outkast, Speakerboxxx / The Love Below (2003)
High points abound on these justly lauded discs, but there's also a surprising amount of filler. I'd take a really solid 45-minute album over a two-hour double album with 45 really solid minutes every time. Time to make the fan edit...
52. Matmos, Rat Relocation Program (2004)
A new entry in Locust's Met Life series, wherein various sonic artists provide a field recording and then a piece that uses that field recording as source material. Here the source recording is of a rat the Matmos boys trapped in a cage: minimalist rattles coupled with periodic shrieks of high-pitched mammalian rage. The reworking finds a way to fit those shrieks into the usual Matmos whirligig of beats, noise, and plain old sonic weirdness. Thanks to Laura.
51. Pluramon, Dreams Top Rock (2003)
Music-making adults tend to want to remake the music that they loved when they were teenagers, which might explain the current re-ascendance of densely-produced shoegazer dream-rock, 15 years after its initial emergence as a style. This album functions an extended attempt to recapture the lost catalogue of strategies implemented by bands like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, and the Cocteau Twins. Features vocals by Julee Cruise, which should tell you something about the set of influences operating here. Recommended.
50. Alog, Duck-Rabbit (2001)
Irregular electronic music from Norway. Clouds of digital ambience and vocoder'd murmurings periodically shot through with arrhythmic shards of dance music.
49. Fennesz, Venice (2004)
Where Endless Summer crumbled California, Venice crumbles old-world Europe. A more abstract proposition overall, as Fennesz, at heart, is a guitarist, and California has a signature sound that can be more easily evoked via the guitar. Nonetheless, this album is by turns grandiose, anthemic, and melancholy: a soundtrack for a dreamed Wim Wenders film. Recommended.
48. White Magic, Through the Sun Door (2004)
Six songs indebted to P.J. Harvey or early Throwing Muses. Passably enjoyable, but breaking no new ground.
47. Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)
Epic roadtrip through America's millenial evangelical wastelands. Classic.
46. Fred Frith, Guitar Solos (1974, reissued 2002)
Thanks to Sluk.
45. OOIOO, Kila Kila Kila (2004)
Disappointing new outing from Yoshimi P-We's side project. Its superb predecessor, Feather Float (2001), kept one foot firmly planted in pop even while its other foot did a wild hokey-pokey in all manner of weird dimensions. This new album eschews the pop in favor of a kind of futuristic space jazz, an idiom with little grounding capability. As a result the album grows amorphous, a closer sister to last year's similarly disappointing Flower With No Color. Moments of brilliance glint here and there but the dominant quality is unfocused haze.
MAY 2004
44. Young People, War Prayers (2003)
43. Erase Errata, At Crystal Palace (2003)
Angular postpunk in the mode of the Slits, Liliput, X-Ray Spex, etc. Pretty derivative, but no less great for it—at least they have good taste in choosing who to derive from.
42. Greg Davis, Curling Pond Woods (2004)
Call it Endless Summer Lite? Where Fennesz is using his laptop to disintegrate pop songs into their component parts, Greg Davis appears to be using his to put those parts back together: his relatively faithful cover of Brian Wilson's "At My Window" can be read as a response to Fennesz's demolished version of "Don't Talk." Davis' vision may ultimately lack the tragic sweep of Fennesz's, but this album is no minor achievement: it is warm, human, and accomplished. Recommended.
41. Faun Fables, Family Album (2004)
Album of gloomy acid-folk which at its best evokes the same incense dream that a band like Espers conjures up so effectively, and at its worst indulges in the wretched mystical excess of "Stonehenge"-era Spinal Tap.
40. Mirah, C'mon Miracle (2004)
Another Mirah record with a few staggeringly great songs surrounded by a bunch that are just OK. On last year's Songs From the Black Mountain Music Project, unevenness was inherent in the concept, contributing to the disc's homemade charm, but C'mon Miracle appears to be a more "official" release, so its unevenness just feels like unevenness. I'd rather have an OK song by Mirah than an OK song from just about anybody else, but increasingly I find myself wanting K Records to exert a little more quality control.
39. Ryoji Ikeda, 0°C (1998)
The middle disc in a trilogy that began with Ikeda's influential + / - (1996) and ends with Matrix (2001). Like the other discs in the series, 0°C makes dance music for an antiseptic future using a minimalist palette: pure frequencies, slivered transmissions, static, and microscopic beats. Stark, harsh, incredibly confident stuff.
38. John Cage, Voice and Piano (2001)
New interpretations of Cage's six works for voice and piano. These pieces represent some of Cage's more accessible material—all but one piece are from the 1940s, predating Cage's more conceptual works. Early Cage tends to hinge on a vacillation between gelid emptiness and urgent primitivism, and the performers on this disc inhabit these modes competently, but not stunningly: the disc is pleasant enough but not particularly illuminating.
APRIL 2004
37. Tu m', Different Lines (2002)
Bleeps, squeaks, pulses, buzzing and noise cobbled into antic assemblages by this talented Italian electroacoustic group. Surprisingly listenable. A CD-R in a limited edition of 50 from Boxmedia.
MARCH 2004
36. Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, Lists of Lights and Buoys (2004)
Vocalist Susanna Wallumrød, backed by atmospheric electronics. A cousin to acts such as AGF or Maja Ratkje, although more song-based (there's country music somewhere in her Norwegian DNA). Apter comparisons might be to Tujiko Noriko or, inevitably, Bjork, and while Wallumrød doesn't always distinguish herself notably from these other acts, this release makes for a suitable companion disc.
35. Various Artists, Money Will Ruin Everything (2003)
Two-CD sampler accompanying the Rune Grammofon book. Like all samplers, this has its high points and its low points: but Rune Grammofon is a label of extraordinary quality, so the hit rate here is formidable.
34. Cocorosie, La Maison de Mon Reve (2004)
Female duo reactivating archaic vocal styles and integrating them into a indie-rock context: imagine pre-war gospel filtered through P.J. Harvey, or Billie Holiday filtered through Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Offbeat samples and bent thrift-store electronics round out the mix and make the disc attractive to junktronica or electroacoustic enthusiasts. Recommended.
33. Valery Gergiev / Kirov Orchestra, Stravinsky : The Rite of Spring (2001)
32. Talk Talk, Laughing Stock (1991)
This album's been lauded as a masterpiece by many, but it mostly strikes me as a middle-aged Brit's take on soul music. Well-executed as far as it goes, but this album's closest kin are the confessional yet safe records that Peter Gabriel's been occasionally offering up over the last decade. Thanks to Darren.
31. Concerto Koln / Sarband, Dream of the Orient (2003)
Recording of a concert program pairing selections of Ottoman-inflected European art music with Turkish traditional music. Unusual and occasionally uneasy. Thanks to Darren.
30. Art Ensemble of Chicago, People In Sorrow (1969)
Awesome disc from the early Art Ensemble, conguring up the sort of deep cave music that nobody since 1969 has ever fully managed to recapture. Thanks to Darren.
29. Derek Bailey, Ballads (2002)
An album of standards recorded by everyone's favorite avant-gardist. Passages of beautiful playing alternate with more characteristically "Bailey" passages: cerebral, atonal. The end result of this oscillation is a feeling of nostalgia and despair, like thinking back on the disintegration of a relationship, or watching a loved one growing ravaged by disease or senility. Masterful, but extremely heavy. Thanks to Darren.
28. Dick Gaughan, Handful of Earth (1991)
Populist folk songs from Scotland. Accomplished and moving. Thanks to Darren.
27. Biosphere, Substrata / Man With A Movie Camera (2001?)
1997 Biosphere album remastered, reissued, and packaged with a bonus disc of soundtrack music. A fine example of "deep electronica" or "ambient techno"—more akin to releases by the Orb or Woob than to those of, say, Brian Eno.
26. Chris Watson, Weather Report (2003)
Chris Watson has received a lot of praise for his mastery of the tech-wrangling and leg-work involved in capturing environmental sounds, but the fact that this batch of recordings coheres as an album is evidence that he excels not only in the field, but in the editing-room as well. The three finished pieces here are so compacted that they evoke a feeling of exploring a weirdly timefolded environment. At other moments the sounds break free of their context entirely and become a sort of ambient music, something composed with alien intentionality. Thanks to Darren.
25. Deathprod / Biosphere, Nordheim Transformed (1998)
I'm hesitant about albums where electronic musicians rework the music of contemporary composers, after having been disappointed in projects remixing Reich, Xenakis, and (most recently) Sakamoto. But this one actually seems to work (although I'm admittedly unfamiliar with the source material). Enough bleak ambience and frigid tones to tide me over until I can afford the Deathprod 4-disc box set. Thanks to Darren.
24. Nils Økland, Straum (2000)
Norwegian folk fiddle, organ, haunting vocals, and ethereal electronics. Forget Enya—this stuff is the real music of Middle Earth. Thanks to Darren.
23. The Necks, Drive By (2003)
A single long-form improvisation, organized as a set of variations built around a chugging central rhythm. The kind of structure will seem familiar to Krautrock aficionados, but where a band like Can is fuggy and unhinged, the Necks are precise, almost mannered, eschewing the ecstatic heights in favor of cooler planes. Not bad, just different. Thanks to Darren.
22. Ryuichi Sakamoto, Prayer / Salvation (1998)
Sakamoto composition remixed by electronic artists. Picked this out of the used bin, hoping for something approaching the magic of Vrioon. No dice. The artists here often seem to be working at cross-purposes to Sakamoto—rather than approaching the remix as a kind of collaboration, many of them seem content to hack out samples and drop them into generic drum-and-bass or acid jazz (!) contexts. Pan Sonic delivers a grandiose shredding, but the rest here is eminently disposable.
21. Liars, They Were Wrong So We Drowned (2004)
Trace goth back far enough and it reveals its punk roots; this concept album about witch trials fruitfully revisits that forgotten juncture, and rounds it out with some funk, shapeless noise, and chanting. Check out the MP3s.
20. Fonica, Ripple (2003)
Acoustic guitar in an environment of teeming digitalia. From Japan, of course. People who like this kind of stuff (I'm one) will find a lot to like here.
19. Angelika Koelhermann, Care (2002)
Sometimes the simplest records are the best. This album takes minimal melodic motifs, and occasionally adorns them with singing or lo-fi recordings of German chit-chat. This material couldn't be humbler, and yet the combination is profoundly affecting, evoking nostalgia and a kind of beautiful melancholy. It's like Koelhermann were a European pen-pal you'd never met, sending you a cryptic set of handmade micro-documentaries, each one making you fall a little bit more in love.
FEBRUARY 2004
18. M83, Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts (2002)
Anthemic synthesizer instrumentals from France.
17. Stars As Eyes, Loud New Shit (2003)
What New Order might have sounded like if they'd been able to use computers to make things a little more digitally fucked.
16. Ryuichi Sakamoto / Alva Noto, Vrioon (2002)
One of those rare collaborations which I like more than the work of either participant alone. Sakamoto's playing provides the crucial color and tint normally missing from Noto's stark bitscapes, and Noto's loops and glitches provide Sakamoto's gentle ambience with texture and undergirding structure. Exceptionally strong work, possibly the finest album I've heard so far this year. Thanks to Julie.
15. Joe Colley, Desperate Attempts at Beauty (2003)
Electronic noise ranging from the delicate to the speaker-destroying. One highlight is the interesting contact microphone experiments (weirdly soothing binaural recordings of a bucket of clay absorbing water).
13-14. The Feelies, The Good Earth (1986), Only Life (1988)
The Feelies are representative of a certain laid-back, affable strand of college rock that reached full flower fifteen years ago (and then disappeared in or around 1991). Catchy in a modest sort of way. Thanks to Kirk.
12. Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)
One of the two key documents from Stereolab's Golden Age (the other being Mars Audiac Quintet). Equal parts scruffy and high-gloss, this disc catches them between two different major incarnations, drawing power from both who they have been and who they will become. Thanks to Rachel.
JANUARY 2004
11. John Cage, Roaratorio / Laughtears / Writing Through Finnegans Wake (2001)
An evocation of Joyce's Ireland, made from field recordings, traditional Irish music, and a mesostic reduction of Finnegans Wake, all arranged according to a complicated conceptual score. Interviews round out the 2-disc set. Thanks to Eric.
10. Califone, Deceleration Two (2002)
A set of improvisatory jams performed as scores to experimental films. This shambles and meanders at times, but I tend to like Califone most when they stray from traditional song forms, so I appreciate this more than some of their more highly-lauded work. Thanks to Eric.
9. Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People (2002)
One of those bands that reminds you naggingly of a million other bands. Sometimes they sound like Radiohead and sometimes like the Strokes. Sometimes they sound like Jeff Buckley and other times like Poi Dog Pondering. At their strongest they can stand alongside any of those acts, but ultimately the amalgamated quality costs them points: even though the record consistently hits its emotional marks it still feels strangely elusive, like a distant lover who has mastered the appearance of intimacy.
8. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (1991)
Trying to round out my collection of essential recordings leads to a shoegazing kind of month around Casa Raccoon.
5-7. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy (1985), Darklands (1987), Barbed Wire Kisses (1988)
From industrial surf music to reptillian disco—the pop reinventions here are standing the test of time surprisingly well. Essential. Thanks to Eric S.
4. Sufjan Stevens, Welcome To Michigan! (2003)
A concept record about the 26th state, brimming with Midwestern sorrow and beauty. The more gradiose the album's arrangements grow, the more the core of loss and despair shines indelibly through: while the jazzy instrumentation and motorik rhythms evoke industrial progress, they inevitably end up referring lastingly to industrial decline.
3. Aero, Pretend (2001)
Not quite music: more a disc that converts your stereo into a malfunctioning shortwave radio or a ticking crystalline droid. Pleasurable in a way that is distinctly alien to traditional conceptions of pleasure.
2. Various Artists, Object Set and Motion (2003)
More electroacoustic minimalism and beautiful electronic soundfields from the superlative Apestaartje collective.
1. Tape, Milieu (2003)
Laconic acoustic instrumentals occasionally ornamented with found sounds or other concrete noise. Not as intricate or clever as the Books, not as patterned or serene as Minamo, and not as oblique or weird as Gastr del Sol, but operating within the same basic territory.
older music >>
raccoon audio >>
raccoon >>
|
