|
pixies, "wave of
mutilation"
4ad
 There's a dead horse over here that needs some
more kicking. Honestly, this collection takes me back,... way
back, to say, two years ago when the last compilation of Pixies
was released. As of this release, Wave of Mutilation: Best of
Pixies, Pixies now have as many "officially" released albums as
"officially" released collections. This collection is by far the
most pointless as it offers nothing that can't be found anywhere
else. I refuse to believe anybody reading this review has never
heard Pixies or the hype that has built up since their death in
1992, so, commenting on the music is almost pointless at this time.
They were a perfect band at a perfect time and I liked them a lot in
my teenage years. They helped to usher out the hair bands of the
1980s, perhaps indirectly, as their confrontational style of pop,
dissonant guitar leads, and abstract lyrics were big hits with music
snobs, record store clerks, and musicians, but never digestible
enough to crack the top 40. I loved the group, but they recorded
four albums: all of which can be bought at midline prices without
having to buy this pointless piece of environmental waste. 4AD is
sitting on a mountain of great music but rather than feed the fans a
DVD compilation of Lonely Is An Eyesore, Cocteau Twins music
videos, or a CD collection of out of print single-only tracks from
various artists or anything that's out of print, junk like this is
peddled to the consumer. There's a number of reasons why the music
business is on the decline: one of the primary ones is that record
companies don't listen to what fans want. This disc is a record
industry tool. It's a way to make a more affordable hits collection
to be in the shops while the band stages the "we need more money"
comeback as well as it's a chance for 4AD to finally make the money
without paying a dime to AOL Time Warner Elektra. So I'm jaded, but,
hey, wasn't their attitude all about challenging The Man to begin
with? I might talk less smack when a video compilation is released,
but for now, this is the only thing sitting on my desk (as I stare
at it with disgust). - Jon
Whitney
samples:
Mochipet, "Uzumaki"
Component
 The
music of David Y. Wang, who has releases on Bpitchcontrol,
Tigerbeat6, and Violent Turd, suffers from a case of nostaglic
schizophrenia with a touch of sentimental aural influenza, and as a
result some technique-obsessed modern day electronic music listeners
will undoubtedly have trouble with Uzumaki. Well fuck them.
Fragmented sounds and fractured samples litter this short album like
beer bottles on a public beach in a way that reminds me of the good
ol' days circa I Care Because You Do and Tango N
Vectif. Whether intentional or not (as many patients are often
unaware of their illnesses), Mochipet has created a charming little
retro IDM disc, with occasional fits of childlike grumpiness mixed
with carefree playfulness. "Labha" starts off almost innocuously
like a symphony orchestra tuning their instruments over a bed of
subtle digital errors. Unable to restrain itself, it ultimately
erupts into a hardcore techno drum assault, truly setting the tone
for the rest of this dizzying release. "Adosa" almost sounds like a
tender love song or lullaby for a special someone with its clean
guitar plucking, even with its skittering sliced snares and cymbals.
Of all the tracks on Uzumaki, "Alobha" stands out with a
quirky melodies battling with one another over spastic beats that
would make most breakcore producers blush like schoolgirls. On the
remix front, Schematic's poster boy Otto Von Schirach provides a
typically unbalanced, uneven remix of the track "Polka Electronic
Death Coutry," where hysterical samples, pitch-shifted soul hooks,
and speed metal riffs and groans do battle for control, ultimately
leaving no clear winner and not offering much. Component artist Xyn,
however, brings the album to a close with a far more coherent
reworking of "Doboro," offering up something akin to an upbeat
version of Boards Of Canada, if you can imagine that. Considering
how many IDM acts these days spend more time harping on the process
than the melody (*cough* Autechre *cough* *cough* Richard Devine), I
imagine many jaded electronic music listeners will get a
well-deserved simple pleasure from the enjoyable sounds of
Uzumaki. - Gary
Suarez
samples:
BASIL KIRCHIN, "CHARCOAL
SKETCHES/STATES OF MIND"
Trunk
 Chancing upon Basil Kirchin's
previously unissued album Quantum: A Journey Through Sound in Two
Parts released on Trunk last year was like stumbling onto a
briefcase full of large, unmarked currency. The densely structured
combinations of time-stretched field recordings, jazz improvisations
and tense atmospherics had that dreamlike, dark, subconscious
quality that I had previously attributed only to 1980's underground
cassette heroes like Roger Doyle and HNAS. Technically, Kirchin's
works could be described as musique concrete, but his unorthodox,
hallucinogenic collages of squawking geese, autistic children and
backwards-tracked saxophone solos seem well beyond the spectrum of
academia to me. The Quantum release was one of my favorites
of 2003, and it led me to seek out Basil Kirchin's amazing
soundtrack to The Abominable Dr. Phibes and his pair of
early-70's experimental masterpieces, both entitled Worlds Within
Worlds. With Charcoal Sketches/States of Mind, Trunk
continues their schedule of unearthing never-issued works by
Kirchin. The Charcoal Sketches of the title are three brief
instrumental improvisations, overlaid with the now-familiar
recordings of birdsong, slowed and mutated to resemble the bellowing
hoots of a wounded gryphon. This material was recorded during the
nascent period before the Worlds sessions, and it doesn't
share the same furious and unpredictable fieriness of the other
albums. The musicians appear to be playing off of the mutated
birdcalls, cautiously weaving through a sparse work of gentle
radiance. At times, the smooth funkiness of the guitar and bass,
mixed with the otherworldliness of the fluttering whoops and
chatters, reminded me of the soundtrack to Fantastic Planet
grafted onto In a Silent Way-era Miles. States of Mind
is considerably more disturbing, a collection of nine brief
instrumental sketches each meant to illustrate a different mental
disorder. This music was used in the soundtrack for a short film
shown only once at an international conference of Psychiatrists held
in 1968. The title of "Plaques and Tangles" refers to the brain
degeneration caused by Alzheimer's Disease. The track begins in a
chaotic swell of competing neuron fires, and eventually digresses
into a dark fog of confusion. Frantic evocations of mania and
paranoia are supplied by Evan Parker's frenzied saxophone solos. My
only complaint is that the most of these tracks are far too brief
and fragmentary, with not enough time given to fully develop the
tantalizing themes. Consequently, it's not nearly as immersive and
powerful as Kirchin's other works. Although I realize that this is
inherent in the original sources from which these brief sketches are
drawn, I hope that Kirchin chooses to revisit this material at some
future point and weave it into the kind of masterpiece I know he is
capable of. - Jonathan
Dean
samples:
Eluvium, "An Accidental Memory in the
Case of Death"
Temporary
Residence
 Eluvium's Matthew Cooper has
eschewed the use of electronic and digital manipulation for his
second album on Temporary Residence, preferring instead to sit down
a piano, turn the microphone on, and record the pure output of his
fingers on the ebonies and ivories. What I came to enjoy most about
last year's Lambent Material (a beautifully narcotic album)
was the stark monotony of the tones. There was very little variation
in a given song: piano restructured by way of electronics and
effects. Each measure was laid out economically and in the perfect
amount to satisfy the movement of the piece. Here, however, Eluvium
produces an undiluted and more robust sound, full of virtuosic piano
suites without any tampering on the end production. The pace is
slightly faster, the playing more frenetic (sounds simply slide into
each another), and the output is altogether a different experience.
The sound is palpably lonely, as if you are peeking in unnoticed on
a master at work alone is his studio, a painter engaged in the first
brush-strokes on a canvas. Likewise, Eluvium grants us access to the
very inner workings of his musical creations, isolating the
sub-atomic particles of them. These particles are kinetic and lush
and elegant in their spareness. The pensiveness is evident in every
song regardless of length, be it only one-minute long ("An
Accidental Memory") or seven-minutes ("The Well-Meaning Professor").
Ironically, a song like "Nepenthe" is more lambent than anything on
Lambent Material: notes flicker and collide, gliding up and
down in arpeggios and cascades. It is not a long album; 27 minutes
and suddenly the end hits. I feel as though I've been truly
listening in on a daily practice session (half an hour of piano
playing squeezed in between a biology lab report and the Proust
reading). Throughout my listenings of this album, I could swear that
I heard a telephone ringing, not in the background of the music, but
somewhere in my apartment. I don't know what aural resonance or
vibrational frequency was causing this phenomenon, and so it makes
me think that someone, somewhere is trying to get through to me. But
I don't care. The music is still playing and I am a little
transfixed by what I hear. - Joshua
David Mann
samples:
Vinny Miller, "On the
Block"
4AD
 After a long wait with no signs of
life of any kind, Vinny Miller is set to confound the world on his
debut full-length for 4AD. Signed over five years ago and with only
one song released on a 4AD compilation, Miller is the label's
longest signing without a record to speak of, and On the
Block shows exactly why. Listening to the record, I got the
overwhelming sense of someone who is looking for the sound that
defines him, moving in all directions at once, and wrestling with
the whole process and the voices in his head all at the same time.
There are moments when, no doubt in my mind, he's figured it out and
he's created a song that moves and completely crushes the soul at
the same time. There are also moments when he's lost the plot
completely, and yet I think it's important to him that people hear
those moments more than the others so that he can grow as an artist.
Either way, it is a genuinely confusing album with sketches of
brilliance from time to time that hint at a much greater work that
will obliterate us all. The album opens with a recording of Vinny
calling into a radio program quiz show where not saying yes or no is
the key, and the DJ's reaction to speaking with him. Then,
seamlessly, the first true song begins in "Breaking Out of Your
Arms," and it's a stunner. Just Vinny and a guitar rend absolute
heartbreak from even the staunchest joy, and he even reaches a bit
to provide some histrionics that do not disappoint. His voice is a
very fragile one on most songs, due mostly, I think, to attempts to
soar out of his range, but it suits the material perfectly. The pace
continues on the mellow side, but then on "Pigpen," Vinny unleashes
the dark side. It doesn't seem like it at first, but in the middle
of the track he shifts immediately from pan effects and minimal
percussion to all out burn. It's delicious, and even though it seems
a bit schizophrenic, my whole body shook with the force in the
speakers. The more bizarre moments ruin such a brilliant
progression, however, with the vocal blends and grunts of
"Cromagno," destroying the momentum just before the calm returns.
And so it goes on, with highs then lows continuing to war for
control with neither fully winning. The awkward starts and stops
intermingled with the annoying side tracks that go nowhere blind the
wonder of it all, and thus I'm left with the feeling that this is a
fine debut, too long in the making due to the artist's confusion.
I'm more than inclined to give Vinny time, though, because the best
moments of this album eclipse entire catalogues of other bands. - Rob
Devlin
samples:
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE & ASTRID MONROE,
"WHEN I WAS YOUNG"
Important
 This dismal new offering by Genesis
P-Orridge was made in collaboration with a well-known producer, who
prefers to go under the assumed name of Astrid Monroe for this
release, presumably out of sheer embarrassment at the outcome. I'm
certain that I'm not alone in having been underwhelmed by most of
Genesis' recent musical work, most especially 1999's Thee Majesty,
P-Orridge's vanity "spoken word" album of apoetic, repetitive
blather that featured the painfully dull ambient sound settings of
the talentless Bryin Dall. "When I was young, there were two reasons
for me to look in a mirror," Genesis intoned on Thee Majesty's debut
Time's Up, "The first reason was to see if my parting was
straight. The second reason was to see if my tie was straight. Now
I'm older, and there's a third reason." Apparently, this sort of
thing passes for profundity over at the P-Orridge household, and
perhaps among a small legion of TOPY holdovers, but for those who
are not altogether convinced that Genesis is a transsexual alien
prophet-shaman-guru whose every utterance must be the very voice of
God, it can't help but seem a little trite. It should come as no
surprise my abject disappointment when I discovered that When I
Was Young is nothing but a rehash of the same non-revelatory
prattle that populated Time's Up. Filtering out the minimal,
dark-ambient backing tracks from the original material, Astrid
Monroe reuses Genesis' vocal tracks, adding heavy distortion and
vocoder effects, placing them in new settings of laughably swanky,
nocturnal trip-hop outmoded by at least a decade. It's hard to say
who exactly the real Astrid Monroe might be, but judging from the
dubby, overproduced atmospherics and syrupy strings, I'd place him
or her squarely in the Massive Attack camp. Sci-fi theremin and
ring-modulation effects are used to contribute to a druggy,
night-clubby atmosphere, which sounds frankly ludicrous accompanying
P-Orridge's space-cadet proselytizing. It should be noted that
Genesis P-Orridge is a great artist and a massively important
counter-cultural figure who has been at the vanguard of art, music
and culture for thirty years. Even now, with his transgender
surgical mutations and his recent resurrection and transmutation of
PTV and Throbbing Gristle, he is proving that he is still a vital
and relevant figure. Many complained when Psychic TV began
experimenting with acid house back in their mid-80's Infinite
Beat phase, but in Genesis' defense, it hadn't yet become a
hopeless clich?, and PTV were able to innovate and expand the
definitions of the genre, influencing a generation of producers.
Unfortunately, When I Was Young comes more than 12 years too
late to be even slightly relevant. - Jonathan
Dean
samples:
Red Snapper, "Red One"
Flameboy
Records
 Was there a time when Red Snapper
was good? I seem to remember that time, but all that I get from this
remix 12" are bits of Red Snapper distilled for a mindless club
audience. Red One is the 12" release of remixes from the Lo
Recordings CD that must be inevitable because there's little point
to any of these mixes outside of a club or sneaker commercial.
Radioactive Man takes a stab at remixing "Four Dead Monks" into a
nondescript jumpy techno/break number that I'm sure some DJ pool has
a genre name for but that leaves me as a casual listener pretty
cold. "Ultraviolet" begins with a minimal arrangement of soft tones
and sparse high hats before kicking in to beat so generic it could
only have been designed to make people mash their bodies together.
The out-of-time bassline tries to give the track some sexy funk but
winds up only smearing things into a mechanically unfunky mess.
"Drill" as remixed by Jakeone is a welcome change of pace on the
B-side, mixing a hip hop vocal over rubbery electro that falls on
the European side of Afrika Bambaataa but is nonetheless groovy and
deep. It's also the only track exclusive to the 12" which is a mixed
blessing as it's the only one really worth searching out. Lastly,
never name the last track on your record "Regrettable" for obvious
reasons. It's just fodder for those of us who are sent copies of
these releases to review. If you have to include a track called
"Regrettable", at least have the decency to bury it in the middle of
your record so that the listener/reviewer's last impression of your
record is not... well, obvious. - Matthew
Jeanes
samples:
Andre Ether with Christopher Sandes
featuring Pickles and Price
Sonic Unyon
 Don't let it turn your brown eyes blue, and
don't let them turn your blues beige. Andre Ethier takes a break
from his day job with the Deadly Snakes to take a stab at a record
whose components could be found strewn across dozens of other
releases. This is no cut-and-paste pastiche work of interpolations,
but rather a slab of traditional (read: tired) old blues motions
compiled into original works. Ethier indulges in an brusque
exploration of the blue-eyed blues (though I admit not knowing what
color his eyes are, really), strumming an acoustic guitar along the
same world-weary twelve bars that musicians have been walking for
decades, with or without the benefits of a bass line. It's difficult
to hear the performer through his influences, with the arraignments
paying a slavish tribute to the core of most songs released before
1970 and Ethier's Dylanesque phrasing leaving very little room for
interpretation. "Little Saddy" is a notable offender, with the
regrettable formula of repeating the first line of the verse twice
before reaching a new thought. A standard blues move if there ever
was one, though such moves only work when that line is particularly
sharp, or delivered with some kind of intense conviction.
Unfortunately, when the Dylan recedes, the listener is left with
only Ethier, sounding completely hollow and flat. On "The Hanging
Man," Ethier asks his band mates for a big finish just before the
final bars, and the response is an abrupt thud that makes for a
curiously anemic close. Without a doubt, there are elements of this
record that will appeal to some. There are the lingering glimmers of
Ethier's influences that haunt every song, and the purist trappings
of the fully acoustic setup and live to tape recording process. The
former, however amusing the familiar sounds might be, does not make
for a compelling record, only a catalog of weak versions of other
people's hooks, meticulously straightened out and made dull. That it
was recorded live to tape is part badge and part excuse, providing a
raw and unfettered version of Ethier and company's performance
together—a claim that the neat and tidy recording does not back up.
The ensemble is extremely reserved, daring not to wander out of the
linear structures of their songs. I don't mean to say that they
should have devolved their trad-blues into some kind of psychedelic
freak out, but that their homage is far too pristine and clinical to
ever capitalize on the crackling, devil-may-care lineage they seek
to identify their music with. - Michael
Patrick Brady
samples:
DJ Kensei & DJ Quietstorm, "In
Time, Like This: Chapter 2"
Nakameguro Yakkyoku
Recordings/Cisco Records
 Every once in a while, a DJ set
comes off so well that it's actually worth releasing as an album,
and the original In Time, Like This was a pretty good trawl
through a crate of head-nodding hip-hop history. Four years on, the
DJs responsible for it have released a sequel that broadens its
sights a bit, and it suffers for the lack of focus. For one thing,
the "four turntables, two mixers, and nothing else" credo of the
original is gone: the Doctor Who sound effects that covered up quick
transitions in the original have been replaced with dubby echoes and
digital delays, and that unfortunately open up the door for
sometimes-house-DJ Kensei to dump the tired sounds of his other job
into the mix. It would be hypocritical to knock the duo for blending
genres on a music-geek site, and the racks of any DJ shop will tell
you that plenty of clubs are only too happy to get some peanut
butter in their chocolate, but the lame-dance-club stink of house is
too strong a reminder of hip-hop's more embarrassing "shake your ass
and damn The Message" tendencies to ignore altogether. When they
start playing records even a bit outside of the usual club fodder,
though, the results improve: Deep Purple getting rear-ended by a
conga beat and a rocky drum kit while some zippy high-pitched
scratching goes on is worth hearing, and it only gets better when
some Yello/Art of Noise-ish loops and shards of Missy Elliott worm
their way into the proceedings. Unfortunately, the good stuff only
goes on for a couple of minutes at a time, and it's almost always
dragged to a halt by invitations to wave your beer in the air; the
fact that In Time 2 is a competently-mastered room recording,
or perhaps badly-mastered soundboard output mixed with one, even
lets you hear the audience doing just that. I'm not sure what the
rationale for the crowd noise is, but it really only reminds you
that you're not at the Liquid Room and/or drunk enough to really get
caught up in the moment and just enjoy things. For 2000 yen, it's a
lot cheaper than going to the show would have been, but that really
just softens the edge of the disappointment. - Taylor
McLaren
samples:
Rosy Parlane, "Iris"
Touch
 Ineffable and at the limits of experience, the
sounds inside this gorgeous little package break experiential
limits. Though the imagery in the booklet suggests a cold and
drifting place, I imagine the music to be more akin to viewing the
sun from only a few thousand miles away. Rosy Parlane's rich and
vibrant pulses eminate and exude away from a center boiling over
with the unspeakable. Divided into three pieces, Iris sounds
like the universal Om hissing in through subjective ears,
playing with the phenomenology of experience, and coming to rest in
the form of a vision: perhaps a certain place or a certain time will
flash back from memory one listen and, on another, my mind will
simply blank and release itself from troubles and worries. The bulk
of the music isn't all zen-like meditations on existence, though.
"Part 2" hums and modulates away over the organic sounds of glass,
chains, and textured friction washing by in an organized concerto
for metal surfaces and brooms. "Part 1" rolls along slowly, almost
like a lullaby, until the processed sound of white noise begins
raining down over the calm. Raining is a completely apt description;
Parlane manages to create a digital rainfall out of bits of white
noise that, while going to sleep, had me wanting to get up and check
if clouds were rolling in. Iris naturally moves into the
melodic at times; layers upon layers of sound will suddenly match up
in perfect sequence to create moments of strange beauty. The layers
drift by eachother eventually and return to the unknown, but these
brief forays into familiar territory are welcome when they happen
and never break the trance of the drones create. "Part 3" is perhaps
the most stunning of the three pieces and the most carefully
constructured. The rhythmic popping and snapping mix perfectly with
the organ flows passing above and beneath them. Strangely enough,
this last track was an exotic and ominous soundstrack to a drive
into the city - the music can be heard a thousand different ways and
different people I've played this for have described entirely
different visuals. The end of the record runs away like the sound of
a projector at the end of the film roll - it's a movie where
everyone sees something different and where the images stay unbroken
in the mind for days to come. - Lucas
Schleicher
samples:
We know that our music picks may be
somewhat challenging to find, which is why we have a community
section which can be used to obtain nearly everything available on
this site. |
