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AUDIO VERITÉ / Recordings: clarification, commentary, criticism INSTALLMENT 7 / June 2007
REVIEWED BY: ASCANIO BORGA Inner Geometry (Ascanio Borga) ASCANIO BORGA Liquid Symmetries (Ascanio Borga) ASCANIO BORGA Bad Ground (Ascanio Borga) • Berlin School affiliations notwithstanding (and I’d venture that in this instance such affiliations are suggested in slight reference only), Borga’s music is striking in as much as its constituent parts speak of a far more intelligent and altogether substantial whole. That he once spent his time in noise-rock bands (what does an earlier incarnation dubbed Vomit 2000 suggest to you?) means Borga’s not just towing the TD/Schulze line. Noise music this is not; it isn’t derivative of Germanic traditions past either, nor can one label these recordings as flip genre exercises. If anything, Borga’s former audio lifestyle means he gets down and dirty with his electronics in a way that recalls, say, Controlled Bleeding more than Tangerine Dream. Of course, Borga’s no Paul Lemos, but he doesn’t try to be—he seems to be a stand-up guy whose sounds conjure up all sorts of simmering psychological maelstroms. Inner Geometry dates back to the turn of the millennium, and, in effect, sums up both the classic European electronic music of TD’s Atem and Zeit in its cosmic proportions as much as a more studied, baptismal Merzbow (or even Lustmord in his more reticent moments). It would be too easy to infer the expected from works titled “Self Interference” and “Oblivion,” seemingly bubbling Goth gruel siphoned from Cold Springs, but Borga throws us a curve courtesy of trilling waves of seesawing electronics ripped straight from the sprawling 80s ‘tronic/noise cassette underground. Liquid Symmetries was recorded just a year or so later, Borga succumbing more easily to Kosmische temptation. Percolating sequencers make up the main course here, flowing like molasses throughout the course of the album, though he hasn’t completely given up the atmospheric ghost: “Destination: Frozen” scuttles both psyche and skin well enough, while the cricket chorus and stalled church bell resonances of “Shifting Landscape” subtly infect the disc’s DNA with markedly powerful results. The most recent Bad Ground finds Borga reveling in abstract guitar craft, gently teased by the odd synth and tempered effects. Across the 11-minute-plus “The Boundary,” Borga’s command of his instrument is truly profound: building discretely-timed layers of dank chords left to infinitely decay, tiny noises flickering away like fireflies dying in a shower of radioactive ash, he erects an insolationist music whose gigantic proportions rival that of Final’s Justin Broadrick or Mick Harris. And the epic title track is an even more unsettling experience, as waves of rubbed feedback coarse about a landscape of feathery drones awaiting the arrival of Lovecraftian Old Ones. Excellent. (DB) • www.ascanioborga.com Back To Top CHOO CHOO BROWN Uno EP (Talent Hoover) ROBERT HAMPSON & STEVEN HESS Hampson/Hess (Crouton) M. HOLTERBACH Aare Am Marzilibad (Eerewhon) LGAMBLE 80mm O!I!O (Part 1) (Entracte) • There is no commonality to these four releases other than the fact that they’re all 3” CDs (well, the Hampson/Hess is a 5”, but it’s 19-minute running time plays like a 3”). Not certain of the efficacy of these short-run critters—other than existing solely for the collector habitue, the format seems too inconsequential to be taken seriously, although thousands of them are released annually. Perhaps if their diminuitive size was directly proportional to compositional quality it would be easier to forgive the whole enterprise, but I have my reservations. Choo Choo Brown, sent to us from the fine folks at Ampoule (of which Talent Hoover is their 3”-minded sublabel), provide tracks of dubious electro-disco and drum machine dada that wouldn’t be out of place on a Rephlex record, chiming synths and beatbox dynamics inclusive. Respectable enough bleepmusic, pliable as xanthan gum but bereft of its longevity. Hampson’s pedigree is impeccable, his skills unimpeachable—his 19-minute collab with Hess is about as non-Main-like as possible. “Normal” drum/cymbal sounds are sometimes recognizable, sometimes processed out of sight, usually in the form of sinister, droning metallic springs that whip about the speakers like the Id Monster from Forbidden Planet—well worth revisiting. Holterbach’s eighteen-minute opus of gurgling musique concréte, various water permutations hissing like Venusian acid rain, is so totally compelling it’s completely perfect, both in its brevity and total actualization. On the opposite side of the spectrum lies Lgamble’s defective harddrive scrambles of Oval, Ryoji Ikeda, Farmer’s Manual, and most every other Mego wannabe into the proverbial cuisinart, an ear-assaulting promulgation of burping, hiccuping, sawed-off glitch that is about as much fun as a dentist’s drill, particularly when its skating on your very teeth. (DB) • www.ampoulerecords.com • www.croutonmusic.com • www.radiantslab.com/erewhon • www.entracte.co.uk Back To Top MAX CORBACHO Vestiges (Free) MAX CORBACHO Moontribe (ad21) MAX CORBACHO The Talisman (ad21) • You know you’ve reached icon status when the line forming behind you is made up of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters aching to make the same beautiful noise. Well, the arms of Mssrs. Steve Roach and Robert Rich reach wide, so much so they’ve embraced workstation wonks the world over, certainly as far as Spain, where Barcelonian Max Corbacho plies the ethno/ambient/tribal trade, genre-slumming as it were, with the same fervent enthusiasm as that of his predecessors. Perhaps slumming isn’t quite fair—Corbacho is unmistakably operating within the confines of genre music, but…so? Lesser artists have mined whole careers musing at the bequest of genre, as born witness by the countless legions of folks lost in the morass of be-bop and alt.rock, and, yes, ambient and dance musics. No one owns the sole birthright to genre—everything’s fair game, even ethno/tribaltechno, a style Corbacho obviously relishes and worships—and exacts multitudes from. Vestiges is an older recording, from 1998 specifically, that sees the artist sowing his wild oats in an attempt to find his own voice. Utilizing the now familiar array of digital synths, mixing acoustic/electronic percussion, Corbacho’s economically-timed pieces do evoke similar grand vistas of dreamtime and sacred space as do works such as Roach & Braheny’s Western Spaces, though the surface patina displays an all too obvious compositional innocence. The follow-up, Moontribe, doesn’t reveal any distinct wrinkles in the basic sonic fabric, though Corbacho’s palette allows for the fomentation of some more interesting sequences, most notably the eerie primordial luminescence of “Distant Dwellings,” the surging soundwaves underpinned by prickly digital beds of machine-spat pulses. It should probably come as no surprise that Corbacho’s ideas finally bear substantial fruit on his most recent work, The Talisman. Here, the affectations of his influences are at least subjugated beneath enough tense spatial interludes, old-world rhythmic calisthenics, and a haughtier sense of drone to discharge most of the genre baggage that marred earlier recordings. The imagistic track titles (“Amnios,” “Garden of Revealed Flame,” “Reborn to Expansion”) are fleshed out with equally memorable sonic bravado: electronics mimic the aura of blossoming nebula, strange noises peal about the corona of the stereofield, rhythm patterns interlock in kaleidoscopic blazes riddled with triumphant hues. Reasonably riveting stuff this, the kind of robust electro-drama that sends shivers down spines. (DB) • www.maxcorbacho.com • www.ad21music.com Back To Top DEAN DE BENEDICTIS Salvaging the Past (Spotted Peccary) GREEN ISAC Etnotronica (Spotted Peccary) DAVID HELPLING / JON JENKINS Treasure (Spotted Peccary) JON JENKINS Beyond City Light (Spotted Peccary) J. ARIF VERNER From a Distant Horizon (Spotted Peccary) • Dodgy label name aside, I grudgingly admit a re-evaluation of sorts regarding the Spotted Peccary contingent, as I had originally written off their catalog as limpid Hearts of Space pablum with a twist of Windham Hill swill. As the man said, first impressions can be deceiving; evidenced by the batch listed above, the braintrust at S.P. have picked up right where HoS, Private Music (during the early O’Hearn/Van Tieghem/Jobson era) and Greenhouse left off. In effect, the label resuscitates the strain of “American” electronic music that dominated the late 80s/early 90s, minus the constant stress of Germanic influence, simultaneously detached from the corporate “new age” appellation. In sum, quality outed—the means justified the ends. De Benedictis is better known to the world-at-large as Surface 10, under which he has released many a fine recording, most recently on Ian Boddy’s stalwart DiN label. Operating under his christian name, his music is no less fascinating. In fact, the differences between Salvaging the Past and S10 material are negligible—De Benedictis’ talent runs rampant, regardless. Treading less abstract waters than S10, a bit more attention paid to the melodic capabilities of his tools separates the personas somewhat; still. this man got’s some synths and he knows how to use them. The outcome ultimately belies this recording’s title, De Benedictis, like some savior of electronica, on a grand mission to rescue lonesome studio wizards from their self-imposed categorical purgatory. Thus the sequencer dance underpinning “Grid Holy 4” exeunts from machineries of joy, alive with carpet crawler shimmers and sonic aurora boreali, buoyant and lustrous. “Sweltering Gazes of Sonora” bounces along on giddy waves of zero-g, Tangerine Dream music for those who don’t like Tangerine Dream music. It’s all in the fingers, y’see, and by any measure, De Benedictis has the agility of a ballet dancer; adroit, light on his “feet,” deft of digit and lobe. Ideas don’t hurt, either—and this fella’s got ‘em in spades. Any new Green Isac recording is cause for rejoice, except amongst the few who’ve yet to fall under their spell. Too bad, because this engaging Norwegian duo have been spinning their fourth-world yarns as long as “fourth-world” has been tagged a legit “genre.” These chaps go way back, farther back than most would think, back to the early 90s in fact, when their debut Strings And Pottery came upon the scene to mostly vast indifference save for this writer, who exalted its many virtues in this magazine’s foolscap precursor back in that epochal 1990 moment. The impact of a disc like Etnotronica (unpretentious, accurate, succinct title) is softer these days but no less satisfying: manipulating a wellspring of hand-forged percussives, flutes, shakers, cellos, varied programmed instrument loops and sundry other electronic paraphernalia, Green Isac seem at this point in history to be very of the moment. We need them and their multikulti takeover of the global village. From the African plasma beatstuffs of “Ahab” and post-Jon Hassell urban jungle weirdness of “Man vs. Lion” to the poignant guitar-pierced penumbra of “Ambino” and tenth dimension backwards-masked rituals of “Zu-puls,” Green Isac are practically required listening. They remind us that the wonders of the pan-cultural milieu needn’t be bastardized by Western colonialism; shuck off the skin, and the whole human condition all beats to the same drummer underneath. And they can bang on their drums all day as far as I’m concerned. Jon Jenkins isn’t nearly so ambitious, which in his case is an attribute. Beyond City Light is a simply lovely piece of becalming “space” music, space in this case inhabiting both cosmic and personal realms. Though Jenkins receives help from others on a gaggle of acoustic instruments (various guitars, deep metals), all of which add further shadings and gradations, his gift of drama, in fact his flair for the dramatic (not the melodramatic) lifts this recording beyond the venal trappings of something like Vangelis’ recent obese exercises in 21st-century pseudo-classicism. Austere, possessed of a regal beauty and strong infusion of, yes, melodicism, Jenkins’ work takes some of Patrick O’Hearn’s early sensibilities to hitherto extrasolar levels, thankfully absent of the romantic schmaltz that dogged many on the, say, old Narada stable. In fact, the nine minutes that is “Through City Light,” with its softly purring sequencer patterns and ultraglide synths, compliments the diminishing sunlight of any given evening perfectly. Working with David Helpling on Treasure, Jenkins’ predilections if anything assume a more mannered, stately, but not any less urgent air. The opening “Grand Collision” is precisely the kind of strident electronic music so favored by “contemporary instrumental” labels in the early 90s: strategically-placed big drums, rippling piano cadences and ebullient string synths recall an era when American electronic music (and, to some specific degree, the California school populated by Roach, Michael Stearns, Kevin Braheny, et al) reflected a majesty that suggested open plains, vast mesas, windswept prairie. Synths are writ large, informed by chamber-esque affectations, percussion making its presence known when applicable, so that there’s no mistaking this is music on an expansive, cinematic scale: imagine David Lean rigging his Panaflex with Korgs. On From a Distant Horizon, J. Arif Verner reigns things back into more modest climes, embracing the minutiae of environment to reveal the prismatic beauty reflected in its undergrowth. “Follow the Stream Entry” simmers and preens thanks to Roachian tribal motifs that bridge Verner’s surging hothouse synthcapades. Every bit as beauteous as Jenkins’ work, though Verner bespeaks of biology rather than Berlioz, From a Distant Horizon, exquisitely well-produced and buffed to a fine sheen (as are all these Spotted Peccary offspring), is soothing balm for the pressurized soul. If that corporate invention dubbed “new age” was a true affirmation of genre that didn’t simply court crystal rubbing and blank-eyed, inner navelgazing, Verner’s measure of pearlescent ambience might be a veritable benchmark. (DB) • www.spottedpeccary.com Back To Top NELSON FOLTZ / TOM LYNN Still Life Vol. One (Still-Life) NELSON FOLTZ / TOM LYNN Interlude (Still-Life) NELSON FOLTZ / TOM LYNN Still Life Vol. Two (Still-Life) • Never before has there been a more unlikely pair ekeing out neo-ambient/drone music. Foltz has worked with, amongst others, Steely Dan, jazz drummer Tony Williams and Barry White; Lynn’s cut his teeth on various film and theater sound productions, none of which have the slightest ties to patron saint Eno’s inaugured genre. Irrelevant, nonetheless—the three volumes of Still Life (Interlude is made up of elements of the first) combined represent some of the most brilliantly astute “ambient” recordings you’ll find this year, last year or otherwise. That the resultant sonic tapestries ebbing out of the digital “ether” can hold its own amongst the million other ambient recordings around is made more remarkable by the duo’s disclaimer that “no electronic instruments were used in these recordings.” What then is the generative source for these archly minimal yet rich tableaux? (Such conjecture remains the primary obstacle many a frustrated music scribe has to overcome, often in vain.) The muted chorale/mantra of voices (dampened Tibetan monk chanting? Karnatic vocal scales? Echoplexed wordless Tuvian throat utterances?) caught in the vast sonar nets and fingered “pulses” of Volume One usher in pro forma, Westernized “contemplative” states, distant relatives to some of Terry Riley’s early organ drones or Pauline Oliveros’ processed accordian epics, though heaven help you if the words “new age” invade to deter your concentrating on this stuff. Deep listening of the Oliveros kind is more the requirement, which instantly negates Eno’s classic descriptor for this music, mostly for the better. Interlude’s molecular characteristics seem more apparent (the thrum of guitar, bent into elongated Budds and skeins of noise that crystallize out of a more refined Eno miasma), and though derived from Volume One’s structure (really, only that work’s central hum has survived intact) germinates out of the room’s very walls as it maintains its own even strength. Volume Two’s sound art is splayed over a Rothko-esque canvas of respirating, miniscule tones that become gradually subsumed into the white-on-white portraiture. Closest of the three volumes to Bernhard Günter’s pointillistic creations, the cumulative effect is like sunlight filtered through blinds, notes suspended in solution, refracted in shards of dustmote. Subtly felt, dazzling, and utterly essential. (DB) • www.still-life.org Back To Top VITOR JOAQUIM Flow (Cronica) • Often it is not enough to be dear to the other—one feels compelled to be fatal to them. Tangled in the maw of long, violin-like sonorities, shards of jack-plug static and nightmarish boomings suggestive of cavernous depths, the strangely neutral voice of Filipa Hora—overdubbed and pitchshifted variously up and down—bears out just this fear, musing “I think this is so dangerous, this intimacy...I think you’re getting so close, I think I’m going to have to stop you from getting closer.” The album charts the passage of the Other in its irreducible foreignness to its deterritorialization and regulated exchange as difference. The compositional techniques are wide and many, but they are all connected up to one another by Joaquim’s processing as though by an immense umbilical cord. Submersive listening is best, as it brings to light the manners in which seemingly random sounds are siphoned into a structure that is given impetus and accrues complexity. Despite its fragmentary nature, moments of melody and harmonic resolution emerge from the shadows of the dim tonal palette. In fact, numerous pieces, especially “Moments Of Emptiness,” betray an affinity for post-rock in their reliance on elliptical melodies and doomy bass vibrations. Joaquim’s approach is more strategic, however. In a subtle manner, he recombines and loops scrambling clusters of reprocessed sound, bleary beats, and subterranean echoes, creating a dramatic tension between movement and stasis. Other works such as “Moments Of Silence” pivot in unusual places, affording it a structural slipperiness which, when combined with metallic guitar lines that rub each other the wrong way, heighten the woozy, dreamlike aura of the work on a whole. With “Misleading Moments” the work comes full circle and the Same assumes its position as the heir to the Other. The album’s signature funeral march of grating electronics and slow-burning guitar clang is repeated, only painted over with some high-end frequencies that glimmer through the ominous ambience like stars through smog. Everything does flow through a single nebula, then, one which is taut and compelling in its use of sound in the construction of narrative. (MS) • www.cronicaelectronica.org Back To Top KAYA PROJECT Elixir (Interchill) VARIOUS ARTISTS Bliminal (Interchill) VARIOUS ARTISTS Dissolving Clouds (Interchill) • Interchill Records is a downtempo label based in BC, Canada, active since 1995. It primarily focuses on “organic electronica for expanding minds” (yeah, right), compiling global sounds from artists mixing ingredients of global fusion and dub to make “quality” chillout. Now before the more exigent reader starts muttering darkly, such a entity is not necessarily oxymoronic (or moronic, for that matter). Just as with more credible sub-genres like minimal techno or IDM, internal criteria apply by which to calibrate the chill, to see if it’s Big or dimensionally challenged. And the low esteem in which chillout is held is likely based on its status as a kind of legitimized slacker soundtrack of substance-lite beat muzak for substance-abusers, from the pomo hepcat to the virtual dope-casualty. This sub-cultural lifestyle detail is in a sense irrelevant, for there are still musical standards, and Interchill evidently take pains to sustain these. That said, a certain suspension of critical faculties is needed pre-entry, as with the arthouse movie-goer visiting a mainstream cinema to see the latest clever Hollywood genre exercise; a go-with-it lowering of filter is a must-have, for the sonic signifiers are almost willfully generic in a pastiche approach in which notions of “spoof’” and “serious” are straddled in a commodified musical equivalent of the global theme-park package tour. Second album by Seb Taylor’s Kaya Project, Elixir, sees his signature style developing beyond debut Walking Through’s somewhat rudimentary take. Kaya Project is less concerned with innovation than with stimulation, and attentive ears will find reward in production detail. A mix of electronic and live instrumentation, Taylor achieves a whole-earth organic edge, but with a thick global sophisticat cardamom-laced latte froth. “From Mumbai” has live violin to give the track real flavor, while “Good Morning London” gets deep, though dirty is not envisaged, on a production that accentuates the detail of live ambience, the resonance of string bass and loose-limbed jazz-feel-referencing drumming. A mash-up tendency manifests on “Ghasi Ram Blues,” swamp-slide guitar and harmonica slathered across an Indic-vocal tweaked blues. “65 Percent” unfolds into ethno-percussive groove-lite, all watery backdrops, chillums, and ambient naturalia. “Dark Tabla” and “Salaam” up the Indo-Arab ante, the former hitting the shanti-chill button hard, the latter heading full-on for bazaaro-world ululation station. The rest of Elixir offers reconfigurations of the same components to round off a polished, even over-primped, specimen of the global fusion end of the chillout spectrum. The chill sub-genre is clearly very much alive, albeit heavy-lidded, and these releases indicate that Interchill does a decent job, in a fundamentally musically indolent domain, if not of raising the bar then of not taking the easy option of limbo-ing under it. The Bliminal collection is a less dub-premised more downtempo groove-oriented compendium. Bong-meets-bongo purveyor Greg Hunter’s “Geonosis Part 1” ushers in psychedelic headnod before the ever-ready Eat Static arrive, deploying an undulating sequenced bassline (think “Safe from Harm”), angel-dusted with regulation-issue SFX, seeking to sneak a low-bpm psy-trance workout past quality control. Slackbaba’s “The Divine Unity” registers nought but a bassline and some psy-wibble. Hibernation’s “Sympath” is a more active blending of atmospheric electro and breakbeat-funk. “Then Whip RT” shifts things onto a more Pork/Ninja Tune ambient-groove acid-jazz tip, a showcase for Gaudi’s flair for dope authenticity. Evan Marc’s (aka Bluetech) “Active Ingredient” is lamentable throwaway electro-techno with an irritating undercurrent of arcade-game sonics. Liquid Stranger offers a slight departure from Interchill orthodoxy on “We Meet at Last”, with reflective arpeggiating keyboard cascades, more aligned with a post-Warp IDM sound design. Moravec continues this orientation on “Kudelstaart”, finding common ground between discreet bhangra-beat and Boards-cum-ISAN analog twee-reverie. This begins a gradual comedown dynamic continuing with Legion of Green Men, whose “Letters Never Sent” evokes a more melancholy landscape of faintly exotic quietude propelled by an active bassline. Ishq gets fifteen minutes to display his less cut’n’paste assembly approach to soundscaping on “Nepalese Sun,” a study in the ambient lushness of rippling keys and chord-wash, sparse tempo gestures and tranquillity bass, slo-floating amid sunlit clouds and heat haze to get you satisfyingly Himalay-ed. Interchill compilations tend to mix novices with names, as does head Interchiller Andrew Ross Collins in compiling Dissolving Clouds. Dub has become a kind of base skeleton to which other borrowings are annexed to flesh out electronic and organic hybrids, and this collection is a prime exhibit. Some tend towards a more rootsy organic faux-authenticity whereas others wear their reconstructed hearts on sleeves. Eat Static open with “UFO Over Trenchtown,” a typical piece of acid-tinged dubbiness getting the funk on down with trance pants and UFO babble-on. Gaudi vs Tripswitch’s “Subdown” is a more reflective ethno-flected digi-dub excursion, recalling that flux of crusty ambient dub outings of the early 90s. Kaya Project’s “From Raag To Ragga” deploys fragments of Indiana (tablas, “mystical” femme vox) to enliven an uninspired sub-dancehall-funk workout. Alex Theory’s “Voodoo Dub” is another percussion-assisted coaster of uber-mellow blankness over which a sampled ethno-wail occasionally idles. Liquid Stranger is a loping springy tidbit of cod-reggae with a playful whacked-out stoner edge and massive rimshot action. Legion Of Green Men’s “Blowbaq” is a knowingly constructed electronix-laden piece on which sawtooth synthbass meets some horn-ridden d’n’b-tweaked funk. Eiji’s “Digimunk” offers Andy Summerian guitar with a Sting-y dub-pastiche bass, over which parades a Buddha-lounge of psy-, Indo-, dancehall, et al. Peyote Sound System’s “Aqua Dub” sleepwalks through some low-profile skank, then a heavy whiff of Shpongle’s used bong trails Mauxuam’s “Ulezak.” Erik The Viking vs Odo acts the ethno-Fatboy Slim fool with a dumb rock-dance plod mixed back behind a raag-skit, all sub-curry house sitar, tabla-by-numbers and daft vocal hubbub: “Its Not Buddha”—hoho. Finally, Lunchbox close with “Jellyfish Roll,” a mélange of reggae, free jazz, dub, and a patina of tie-dye colorings. Plenty to appeal to the sublow and blow brigade then, and Dissolving Clouds, despite this listener suffering a serious chill outing midway, has more poise than its peers. (AL) • www.interchill.com Back To Top OPSVIK & JENNINGS Commuter Anthems (Rune Grammofon) • With a disciplined and clearly deceptive sense of naïveté on full display, these 10 eccentric, jazzish, congenitally Conchordish pieces run through any number of disarmingly distinct instrumental combinations. The line-ups seem familiar, but like Penguin Café Orchestra, the combinations prove illusively unpredictable and still sensibly unexpected. Add some untrained sounding vocalizations, a catalog of atmospheres and intrusions to keep you guessing from minute-to-minute and still the music remains considerate enough to never really startle you, just nudge you along into a sunny, gently-edged tilt. Hard to consider too many comparisons—for some reason Koop and the less boisterous moments of Sakamoto’s jazzy tracks come to mind—but please excuse the comparison. At turns atypical and exquisite, the voicings here are profoundly well thought out: an electric guitar shifts from a simple, clangy amped crackle to a Fripp-smooth tweeness as the piece itself displays a profound compositional sympathy with the aural transitions. This consistently tight relationship between the compositional dynamics and nature of the instruments used is rarer than any of us should like to confess, and Opsvik & Jennings prove to have both the ear and the technique to articulate the deeper reaches of the way in which the inflections of an instrument benefit and contribute to the compositional and harmonic content, and vice versa. Because instead of the often invented voices of electronica—the instrumental voices here are familiar—they arrive with what Dickens might term “expectations” and so the combinations and recombinations trade smartly on the differences. In other reaches, the music also exhibits a casual and approachable air, with the presence of some found sounds and bits of the seemingly unrelated dropping in for a considered moment of contrast, an additional layer of warmth, or, appropriately, a sly and satisfied grin. (KL) • www.runegrammofon.com Back To Top CRAIG PADILLA The Light in the Shadow (Spotted Peccary) CRAIG PADILLA / SKIP MURPHY Phantasma (Groove Unlimited) • Padilla’s one of the real unsung Berlin school advocates left in the U.S., a breed that is diminishing in number (joining Dwellers at the Threshold, Van Zyl, Alpha Wave Movement, a handful of others) who idealize the synth/sequencer interface like their ancestors TD, Schulze, Robert Schroeder, etc. What sets Padilla apart is he’s no abject copyist, nor is he a true original—he’s simply an accomplished composer working within an established style, making it his own while magnifying its mojo in a variety of fresh contexts. His recent full-length for Spotted Peccary falls well into line with that label’s contemporary vein of space music, but the fact that the disc sports one long-form, hour-long track instead sets Padilla firmly on the sort of hallowed ground trodden upon by ambienteers Roach and Rich. Isolated effects twinkle in the air like eclipsed stars; crusty Moogs throb their machine essence on the horizon—it’s a warm blanket of synthetic wool, supple and, indeed, embodied with a sense of grace, Padilla sculpting machine-made meditation from channeled electricity. The collaboration with Murphy is equally rewarding, but the two are up to more traditional tricks; we’re in full-tilt starcruiser mould now, thrusters set on automatic infinite. Inside the booklet sports the duo’s arsenal of gadgets from which their science fictions take shape: the bubbling Modular might of “Shadowed Transition,” the busky black-hole hues of “Sleepwalking,” the kaleidoscopic sequencer sunspots of “Illusions” pulsating in a vivid riot of red. Of course, all of these elements are but prelude (and coalesce splendidly) for the 25-minute title track, as the duo’s synths bob and weave amongst liquid squalls of rhythmic patter buttressed by bass probosci. Meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss—truth be told, much, much better. (DB) • www.spottedpeccary.com • www.groove.nl Back To Top ['RAMP] Oughtibridge (Doombient) ['RAMP] Looking Back in Anger (Doombient) ['RAMP] / MARKUS REUTER Ceasing to Exist (Doombient) STEPHEN PARSICK Hoellenengel (Doombient) • Doom. It’s the New Dark. We’re post-dark now, and German doom duo ['ramp] got with the Doomgeist a few years ago when they coined the term "doombient" for their work, feeling that their music was “no longer simply dark but pitch-black.” What they call “doombient” is “...the sound of fear... the mechanics of fear,” according to an in-depth essay on their website. But this doombient isn’t doom as we know it, not the sludgey drone doom Sunn 0)))) or Khanate or Boris peddle. No, ['ramp]’s doombient is a more refined strain, essentially an unholy union between some of the tropes of the Death Metal aesthetic encountering the sonic signifiers of post-TD/Vangelis/Jarre E-music wave. That’s not to dismiss it, merely to reduce it. A potted history details their founding inspiration as being a Lightwave gig in 1996, as well as like-mind peers such as Redshift and Node, and of course the Berlin School Kosmische Musik legacy, though ['ramp] are more jackdaw eclectic in their appropriation of elements from other sub-genres. ['ramp] is Frank Makowski and Stephen Parsick, both on “electronics, atmospherics, tools, and sequencing,” and their third official album Oughtibridge is first in the pile, recorded live at Jodrell Bank on June 23rd 2001. As befits the setting the concert takes off with the uber-cosmic “Dron(e)field.”The cosmos depicted here is, as you’d expect, deep and dark, but also decidedly angst-ridden. It’s High Anxiety in space. Rumbling sequences propel a number of pieces that invariably turn out to have an edge of Something Wicked This Way Comes; pulsations growl, and wisps of distortion rub up against the ethereal and the lush. And it’s this kind of dynamic of light and shade that is a feature of the recording, as they juxtapose drift-float-wash atmospherics with serious sequencer action. When the alarming density of the music with its pummelling arpeggiation action threatens to become overbearing, crystalline melodies are ushered in to bring respite. Oughtibridge overall is manna from heaven (or more aptly from hell) for those seeking a dark-hued Alien-ized update to their Tangerine Dream collection, or other post-E music casualties suffering cold turkey from Redshift withdrawal. Looking Back in Anger is a retrospective covering 10 years of ['ramp], and by far the least successful or interesting of these releases, and yes, boys, the Berlin School can’t be avoided. Opener “The Warsaw Disaster” is no more no less than TD Poland-period with a perfunctory beatbox intervening to drag it 90s-wards; rudimentary d’n’b-inflected programming suggests an anaemic mid-90s Fax label outtake, especially in queasy combo with the 90s preset larded over this half-baked cosmic-bedroom workout. “Sakrileg am Mittag” overdoses on sombre synth-choirs and the occasional wavering sub-overtone vocalization in a cartoon attempt at Dark Portent. “Generatorenkonflikte” fixates on some odd industrial-inclined rhythmic exploration, an infelicitous encounter between post-d’n’b beatbox, flanger, and video-game. “Tribejagd” is an unhappy hodgepodge of ethno-wailing, heavy rock synth bass riff, noises of a Stygian blacksmithery, and tribal tom tom tattoo. “What is the Point of Eating Concrete?” hosts all lighters-in-the-air industrial sequencers and an insidious “Wakeman virus” in the synth that results in nasty prog-blues-inflected soloing seeping into the mix. If TD hadn’t already overworked this overblown arpeggiation station, then Redshift and Node squeezed out the dregs, so it seems depleted territory with no new tweak. Only on “So Far,” with the agency of Markus Reuter, do things start getting interesting, on a more ambient drone-based post-industrial textured outing with subterranean echoes of Tjukurrpa from fellow Teutons Troum. They wisely stay in this ambient drift area, and find a way of hitching these richer layers to a subtler version of the beatbox and sequencer-squad attacks to give “Scissors (Short and Painful Edit)” an entirely happy 14-minute life. For the first two-thirds of its length, however, Looking Back in Anger feels like an unmediated trawl through some old demo tapes documenting a period when ['ramp] were working out how they could transcend their influencing parts to become more of a whole. On Ceasing to Exist, Parsick/Makowski wisely hook up more extensively with experimental guitarist Markus Reuter, probably familiar to most E-music adepts from his collabs with Ian Boddy. Reuter’s presence seems to galvanize the duo to push the envelope and get outside previous compositional and timbral comfort zones. The album is based on “touch guitar” improvisations subjected to further electronic treatments by ['ramp]. The material was then processed and produced further separately by all three resulting in a final batch of dronescapes then arranged by Reuter. The title track, for example, initially barely perceptible, kicks into life with a great wall of sound like a massive combustion engine in a tunnel (a subwoofer would be a sine qua non to feel the benefit here), engulfing you then relenting as you’re feeling totally overawed. The trio maintain an intense level of interest in timbres and sound stage over 70+ minutes that juxtapose swathes of gossamer ethereal with occasional eviscerating chthonic undercurrents, Reuter’s contribution from his touch guitar proving invaluable in adding a fresh coloring to ['ramp]’s undisputed technical expertise with sound currents. On to Stephen Parsick solo, who makes great play in promo material of the fact that his Hoellenengel has been realized without electronic processors, overdubs, sequencers, or MIDI interfaces. A strange assertion of some kind of intemediate technology electronic purity notion that makes a virtue presumably of immediacy, or, less charitably, a self-indulgent display of mastery of his analog synth-ware. Be that as it may, Hoellenengel is driven by a kind of “concept”/”programme” which is explicitly stated. It’s based on some electronic music equivalent of Fantasy Football whereby you get to play the Vangelis of Blade Runner alongside that most iconic/generic of practitioners of Ur-doom, Lustmord. Parsick does indeed capture the spirit of the sound of Vangelis’s synth in Scott’s movie, unsurprisingly, as it turns out that he used essentially the same sort of equipment as Vangelis for this recording, fusing it in almost uncannily mimetic fashion with infuences from Lustmord, particularly on the more gloom-laden pieces like opener “Der Tod.” Overdetermining artwork in the form of a simple black and white expressionist sketch of a dark angel surmounting a pile of skulls sets the tone for an entire album of unashamed E-music melodrama and netherworld dread transmissions. Dire tonalities delight in articulating their forebodings, as Parsick gives full rein to his electronic hardware obsession while luxuriating in pursuing his vision of a baleful angel. Plenty here to keep the analog enthusiast happy, provided the Vangelis-Lustmord blend appeals to your personal doom bent. But those seeking less of a pastiche presence in their soundscapery, and wanting a more authentic experience of doombient, qua doom + ambient, are directed towards the ['ramp]/Reuter release. (AL) • www.doombient.com • www.parsick.com Back To Top ANDREW PEKLER Cue (Kranky) • Caramba! Wilkommen to the past, and what a lovely and predictable past this is. The rhythmically derived ambiences of Cue are persistently pleasant, persistently loyal to the number four and persistent in recalling the push-button Rhythmusmaschine kunst of Zuckerzeit-era Cluster with such a loving ear you might easily and at times think this to be some Roedelius/Moebius reunion bootleg. (Not the one which does seem to have actually occurred somewhere in Europe during this ominous spring, updated and cataloged for the home iMovie, iEdit, iTune, iMeMine filmmakers’ newish and neverending needle-drop needs in the critical commercial 1:07 to epic 8:16 edit-ready encyclicals.) Pekler of course makes current the technology, deepens the technique and even in the best, most up-to-date needle-drop tradition, provides some informative track descriptions. Witness then: “Rockslide,” nostalgic mid-tempo pathos for widescreen drama, slide guitar and electronic effects.” It is, too. While the rhythmic patterns are themselves often and awfully familiar, the way in which they are voiced proves the work’s strong suit, incorporating hints of lowercase details and glitchy wet-wool-on-belly-skin irritation re-imagined by millisecond sync’d signal manipulations that surgically subdivide the pitch-perfect percussive envelopes amid cunning role-swapping stretches and slightly off-center pitch manipulations discharging purposeful and accurately-placed suggestive and evocative smears. The pieces reassemble, disassemble (as well as dissemble) in ways that prove to be as entertaining and often charming as the descriptive titles and their descriptions, as described. A deft and precise touch that also happens to be very light. (KL) • www.kranky.com Back To Top FRANK ROTHKAMM FB01 (Flux) FRANK ROTHKAMM FB02 (Flux) FRANK ROTHKAMM Moers Works (Monochrome Vision) • No doubt a person's words, image, and surroundings may conjure up assumptions that don't so much taint as color said person's reputation. We acknowledge the genius legacy of Einstein, for instance, yet through solely the most superficial of observations—his Bartlett's quotation on imagination versus knowledge, or more likely archival images of the clutter encompassing his chalkboards, workspaces, even his wardrobe and mane of hair—one might at first blush peg him as some scatterbrained, quixotic uncle/grandfather figure. The chinks in the character-armor of supermodernist philosopher-cum-musician Frank Rothkamm require more effort to discover, but studying his art in conjunction with the life, technology, and quasimystical principles behind it makes it easier (and maybe a little sadder) to wonder what portion of him is mad scientist and what portion simply mad. Everything about Rothkamm is just so, and yet haphazardly so: He is German-born, New York-living, and Hollywood-recording. His overarching vision merges Fourier analysis, Kant's championing of intuition, and Turing's computational theories—all different ways of using parts to synthesize the whole. His name is aligned with no less than eight recording and production aliases; at one point he had ties to mainstream acts like DJ Spooky and The Cranberries. Now, however, his movement-in-progress beckons loud and exclusively. To that end, Rothkamm is painstakingly seeing through to completion artistic renderings of his supermodernism: organizing his back catalog online to show the path and purpose of its nonlinear development, performing pieces controlled by and for odd combinations of vintage electronics, and building specialized music- and code-generating black boxes. One such box—IFORMM, software of Rothkamm's retrofitted design that he has elevated to the title of instrument—figures prominently in FB01 and FB02, the first two-thirds of a trilogy featuring the sonic results of complex mathematical manipulations of sine waves. (FB03 was slated for release earlier in 2007.) Equally important here is the human-machine interface, as Rothkamm's ideal performances are both multitracked and executed near a sleep state to simultaneously defuse real reality and promote his virtual, random one. The results mostly feature colonies of bright tones ping-ponging across and into deeper, darker washes. The closing portion of FB01's "Atmospheric Composition" and the opening of FB02's "Silence of Mute" may be Rothkamm's most cohesive work there, the former banging over and eventually melting into a low bass drone that forms a bridge between the releases. There's no real rhythm to grasp on these albums for more than a few seconds, nor is there much of a musical story to be told unless you lull yourself into the belief that you catch John Williams' famous five-note alien communiqué from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (this reviewer hears it twice) or simply hear arcade games talk to each other after closing time (an Atari emulator is involved here, so we may not be far off). Cohesion isn't really the point, however, as these are really digital headphone-trip compositions. FB01 and FB02 represent deconstructivism reconstructed, musique concrète ground up and recast. Rothkamm so wants his future and the music therein to be in his words "utopian and scientific" that he essentially converts the technologic into the psychotropic, sound meant to be synonymous with song if not triumphing over it altogether. Moers Works offers welcome examples of structure in Rothkamm's work without needing to hunt down individual efforts in house, leftfield dance music, and multidimensional stereophonics. This collection exposes his past life as a German tape manipulator, a good twenty years before he converted to supermodernism. "Arpeggiator" shows that Rothkamm could make room for melody even in the absence of formal time signatures. "Industrie," "Wasser" and "Quartett" respectively relay bracing sonic monologues from field recordings of various machines, forms of water, and string instruments. The magnum opus "Rauschmittel" (U2 sample and all) and moody meditations such as "Ich" and "Relikt" prove that Rothkamm once shared family-tree branches with The Orb, Meat Beat Manifesto, even Negativland. While tracks like "Rückkopplung" presage at least the algorithmic atmospherics underpinning his FB triad, many of the compositions on Moers Works are downright traditional—at least what passes for traditional in the realms of weird music. The relative ease with which these older sounds engage the listener makes it that much harder to tell if Rothkamm's new manifesto or its IFORMM soundtracks can find a foothold of legitimacy. (AB) • www.rothkamm.com Back To Top SENKING List (Raster Noton) • Senking's (Jens Massel) List appears to be something of a mould-breaker, an atypical release from a label of card-carrying minimalist credentials. Not that List is not minimal, for in many ways it is, but it’s possessed of a pronounced film-ism, an almost-narrative setting it apart from more abstract Raster neighbors the Ikedas, the Komets, and the Notos. And there’s something live-sounding and “moist” about it that suggest Raster’s gradual shift from the dry austerity of its erstwhile signature sound (cf., Alva Noto’s similar shift on Xerrox Vol.1). On opener “Common Business,” Massel launches straight out into gruzzy experiment, hitching to his trademark inky electro dub minimalism a distillate of Sunn O))) doomdrone buzz. Soon the air is heavy with suspended menace. A deep voice utters “Let's go!” and jagging synth-shards and whirring mechanics are upon us. Massel has always had an acute sense of detail, adept at placing a syn-blip or bass-prod in space, choreographing sudden staccato chord up-surges and giddy fall-aways. But (previous album) Tap’s clinical ellipses of dub aesthetic have given way here to a more filled-out sound, something altogether more Carpenteresque (that’d be John, not Karen). His deployment of the grumble of analog synth-bass and noir-ish melody snags a semiotic of classic 70s film soundtrack. Despite its air of near-dark electro-noir, List is no gorescape or gloom-fest accompaniment, since it stays notably at a remove from subject, voided of emotivity, able to play with the gestures of manipulation which film music and sound design deploys to choreograph audience response without actually getting its hands or the listener’s ears mucky. It’s creepy but it’s like we can see behind it to Senking Does Creepy, as if Massel is operating in collage-ist mode, with music only incidentally involved, his use of spoken word samples being sufficiently distinctive as to refresh what had become a cliché. Couple this with a command of reverb and technologies of emplacement and distortion and you have a peerless sound designer. So not only does List’s buzz-grain bricolage hark wetly back to industrial and step further away from the starched neo-academicism of microsound, but it cements the return of a sense of the aleatory to counteract the more predictable trajectories of a decade of computer-mediated composition. (AL) • www.raster-noton.de Back To Top STRATEGY Future Rock (Kranky) • Within the secessionist dells, plains, valleys, peaks and riparian zones of Cascadia, some day in not so distant and grey tomorrow to be under ceaseless attack by the militias of California and the Baja in their desperate struggle for reliable sources of fresh water, Paul Dickow has built nine tracks from a variety of familiar samples and sources. Some are assembled and reassembled with an ear toward the fourth world music inflections one would typically associate with many of Jon Hassell’s constructs, here naked of the horn and jazz traditions but still inviting a tenuous haze of subjective/associative connectivity with things like “Red Screen” based on another track called “Blue Screen” but clearly not the “Bluescreen” that performed on Hassell’s Dressing for Pleasure. Others are assembled with greater originality and utter freedom from the cloying banality that is usually “rock,” albeit with less interest. So, the percussion gleams in tight, nearly shimmering and neatly terminated patterns. The sounds resist outright melody and are immersive and well-knit strands of organ, synthesizers, guitars and looped information, all counting to four and sometimes eight in every possible combination and division. The pitched material is then pitch-shifted front to back and into every corner of the soundstage and handled with reprocessing, looping and enough nicely managed analog touches that evidence of nearly perfect command of the craft are displayed everywhere. It makes for some reassuringly lovely textures with more than average tooth, detail and great deal of presence. The accomplishment across the opening four tracks is a remarkable wholeness to the pieces: while the individual parts are all within earshot the overriding impression is that of a single and integrated, airy and moving, mass. And then things, as they are wont to do, change. A few tracks are in fact songs made with barely convincing vocals. If the aim is to use the voice as yet another textural component of the ensemble the mix seems intent on the opposite, chumming as it does with the hierarchic tradition by raising the vocal bits to AM radio levels of clarity while simultaneously stripping away any chance for the listener to move attention to the infinitely more intriguing clockworks of the supporting sounds. As for the lyrics, the less said the better. And as for rock and tomorrow, didn’t Can take care of that a while back with Future Days? (KL) • www.kranky.net Back To Top GREGORY TAYLOR Voiceband Jilt (Cycling 74) • Any number of outcomes might come out when music informs music. The derivative nonsense of most popular forms comes hurtfully to mind, along with their accompanying waste of time and effort. The emulating tendencies of youth also elbows in with inevitable and charming me-too-isms. But once beyond the gravitational pull of imitation there emerge those works which add a new insight, hit on a living, breathing hybrid or simply become whatever is in hindsight so obviously next. For his performance at the 2003 Impakt Festival in Utrecht, Gregory Taylor responded to a brief calling for “blatant plagiarism” and failed to plagiarize. Instead he created a live work whose foundation is reminiscent, in theory anyway, of Gavin Bryars’ Hommages. But here the sources named include Anzola, Berthling, Cascone, Chartier, Cray, Ehlers, Deupree, and many others. That 47 minutes of live performance can at least gesture at such a large field of influence tells you something about both awareness and respect, and each is abundantly evident amid and within the eight segments that comprise Voiceband Jilt. There is a pleasingly coy progression and self-referential quality to these pieces, at times borrowing one from the other to yield sonic and structural coherence. The way in which on-the-fly transformations occur and tie the sections together is less mimesis and more the systematic deployment of the audio materials. In some ways that careful knitting is frankly more impressive than the stand alone elements. This aspect of the work guides the listener to consider the entire compositional arc, rather than being satisfied with fixations on the attributes of its gleaming and mysterious segments. Generally sonorous and always in motion, drones are dressed with rhythmic fragments which evoke familiar and less familiar voicings. These components infer that they might coalesce but do so only in the most discrete ways. Noise meets and agrees with being organized. Scratches and glitches coexist with the nearly hurtful smoothness of vast and temperate volumes of shifting pitch. The balancing act ranges across a considerably varied set of inputs, just as it also reconciles the now and again emergence of wonderfully structured passages with the purity of pure sound. And, unlike the first and last phrase of this review, there are none of the sadly more common exhortations of tautology that hope to pass for the music—or writing—of our day. (KL) • www.cycling74.com Back To Top RAFAEL TORAL Space Solo (Quecksilber) • Machine music of the first order, Space Solo is the pure work of a pure agonist. In terms of uncovering new methods of origination and the accompanying demands of continuing to up the ante among listeners, Toral has departed the safety of the pale and begun demarcation of his very own protectorate. The sonic clarity of these solos—in each case the voice is unaccompanied by anything other than itself—offers the same unsettling and stark character as does the lighting technique employed by photographers for forensic imaging. The opening piece—“Portable Amplifier”—is derived from modified MS-2 amplifier feedback and a light-controlled filter intercut with interludes performed on amplified coil spring percussion. The sound itself resembles some clinical and macro study of what we might imagine happens when subjecting a small bit of willing plastic to being stretched, compressed, tweaked and twisted in a nearly terrifying level of detailed sqeaking that insists one experience every nuance and bit-level resolve of the event free of grain, free of distraction and completely free of any embellishment. Like excursions in the hard and the soft, continuous and discontinuous, round out the remaining four pieces, the last being a return to more of the first. The single-minded explorations dissect traces of delayed feedback, pitch manipulation and overlapping pulse waves, completing a sampling of unflinching work based on the quintessential components that comprise any and every thing else we think we hear. (KL) • www.quecksilber-music.com Back To Top MIKA VAINIO Revitty (Wavetrap) • Over more than a decade, Pan Sonic have been uncompromising in pursuit of a vision drawing on diverse influences—from Suicide to Einstürzende Neubauten and industrial to dub and even the outer limits of C&W—distilled through sinewave spartanism. It’s an abrasive strain of electronic music but nonetheless solicitously sculpted for all that. So Revitty is Vainio sans sidekick Väisänen and it’s similar but different. Previous Wavetrap Vainio, 1999’s Ydin, was something of an enquiry into feedback excess, and if anything Revitty is more unforgiving. Title translates as “Torn,” hinting at uneasy listening, and the set is marked as much by its lowercase dalliances as its barrages of stun-gun sonics. Vainio solo is also distinct from Ø and the Philus, even more austerely minimal with swathes of low-level listening fizz-buzz, occasionally breaking out into more familiar technoid rushes, and a certain kinship in concrète with the Marchettis, Ferraris, et al, suggests itself: sarks on the cover—uh oh. And three shorter pieces concerning “Hampaat” (teeth) punctuate bursts of electronically-charged aggression with lulls that become less frequent and silent, perhaps indicating the gradual give-in of the hapless victim. Emotion is given its head on “Yksinäisyys, Suru, Katkeruus” (“Loneliness, Sorrow, Bitterness”), 20-minutes of audio-drama that dwell uncomfortably close to the liminal edge, seeming to take place initially in a dried-up, evacuated medium-size water tank with some sparse effected gratings and slapback echoed clanks for company. “Raatelu” (“Mauling”) follows with a compression of themes that culminates in an eardrum-buzz grindtronica of distorto and fuzz and harsh bass-throbs sparking with digital noise flickers. Revitty turns out to be a horror story sonicized with all the attendant orchestrations of suspense and release, ending with “Loppu,” two minutes of silent dread culminating in a slasher-flick snicker irreparably...Torn. Ouch. (AL) • wav.post-pop.org Back To Top BILL VAN LOO & J. SCHNABLE Raindays (Chromedecay) • On first glance, it’s apparent that Detroit artist Van Loo has been accruing many billable listening hours at the expense of the firm Maurizio, Basic, Channel, Chain & Reaction. Collaborating with partner J. Schnable, Raindays indeed speaks volumes about sharing their Berlin mentors’ knack for dub’s cavernous spaces, afterburner techno gridlock, and granular sonic placement, where whatever propulsive energy the music attains does so at the same considered, tepid, slo-mo pace. Far be it from these two to just rest on past laurels, however; though both artists regard this recording as a “side project” of sorts, it’s contemplative, emotive qualities assume the next logical step from the Teutonic tutorials of the mid 90s to inflect its own perfectly captivating ardour. Lest you cry out CR ripoff and run to your out-of-print Mille Plateaux records looking for approbation, consider that Van Loo and Schnable have cooled the Reaction off significantly, smoothing away most of the incumbent rhythmic contours in favor of pillowy atmosphere dappled with pastoral reminiscence as viewed through a vaseline-smeared lens. A track such as “These Dubious Moments,” all crushed velvet Fender Rhodes clusters and tentative bass frequencies, culls as much from the syntax of new age as new dub, without deferring to the facile vagaries that blight both genres like plague. This is music to greet the dawn rather than the dancefloor: morningside radiances are soundtracked by the fingerpops, synth formations, and shimmering reverb-blurts of “Awareness” or the pensive dum-dum fuzzbeats of “Emergence” that sensually morph into purple lambent haze. Shorn of rough edges, as diaphonous as moonlight and every bit as mysterious, the cloudpool regions reflected in these Raindays are no doubt surfed by two crafty blokes tuning in to Channels far from Basic. (DB) • www.chromedecay.org Back To Top VARIOUS ARTISTS Chasing the Dawn: Ultima Thule Ambient Vol. 1 (Ultima Thule) • Originally denoting the Arctic, “Ultima Thule” later became vaguer in its ambit, referring to any remote area at the cartographers’ outer limits. But devotees will know UT as a long-running broadcast on Australian community radio, each show comprising a continuous ambient mix, aimed at creating an eponymous off-world narrative. Chasing the Dawn is a 78-minute audio-spread compiling unreleased tracks by thirteen UT-defining artists in the triumvirate of key sub-genres: atmospheric, ethno-ambient and spacemusic, among whom are the venerable likes of Roach, Rich, Greinke, Story, and Brennan. Tim Story opens the album with keynote short piece “Otherize” that crossfades into “Salila,” a piece of pleasant but undistinguished doodle by Matt Borghi. The crystalline “Drawn from Sleep” of Delicate Systems cedes to fellow Australian Amongst Myselves exhibiting his "Distant Horizons," a quiet glowing composition whose textural detail reminds of kinsman Ashera. Robert Rich offers the marimba-led “Qatifan,” a piece of microtonal neo-exotica a la Rainforest that’s unmistakeably his, an overtoning background choir wordlessly just-intoning in odd chords, ending in glurp and tweetery, which turns out to be the segueway into “Temple of Dawn,” its hackneyed semi-environmental soundscapery transmitting landscape channel versions of the same gamelan spirits and sub-tropical exotic colorings, courtesy of Kelly David, effortlessly securing the CD a “New Age” grace-note categorization. Jeff Greinke’s bland-out hybridization of Eno circa On Land with a spacemusic bent on “5000 Falling Souls” likewise barely reaches beyond meditation fodder. Thom Brennan is equally timbrally timid, but more beguilingly psycho-active, cascades of bell-tones and myriads of tinkling and subdued drone undergirdings shifting below, a typically naturalistic, programmatic (“Falling Water”) electronic piece that recalls the teeming electronic tableaux of Vir Unis. Robert Scott Thompson weaves a fleeting Eno-tinted tapestry suspiciously titled “Ascent” (remember Apollo?). “The Way Beyond” is glimpsed through Jim Cole’s processed overtone singing, getting into a devoto-zone familiar from dronetone croney Mathias Grassow’s similarly attuned bell’n’bowl ceremonials. After which, Dan Barrio’s “Between States” sounds positively malevolent, when in fact its spare guitar loops and bass trawls are just gentle pseudo-giants of the Morphean realm. Roach's “Approaching Kata Tjuta” is unsurprisingly the most fully realized and resonant piece here, unfurling endless vapor trails into mid-distance merging into a sonorous soul-well of tonemass arcing and diving in abyssal reverberation. It’s that good. Concluding with “Red Stone, Black Sky” Numina back-Projekts synthy 4AD over springy tympanics for a would-be deep but ultimately wispy crystal gothica finale. Overall a compilation that should serve the purpose of getting the listener ultimately Thuled up. (AL) • www.ultimathule.info Back To Top VARIOUS ARTISTS Cryosphere (Glacial Movements) • Cryosphere is the inaugural release of Glacial Movements, a fledgling label-project curated by Alessandro Tedeschi, one of a shadowy band of isolation-ambient droners scattered through Europe. As Netherworld, Tedeschi has released on Oöphoi’s Umbra/Penumbra imprint, also collaborating with the Deep Listening maven himself. Here compiled are nine artists whose approaches are homogeneous yet individually voiced; from veterans like erstwhile ritual ambienteers TUU and guitar-wrangling drone-anists Troum to relative unknowns Closing the Eternity and Tho-So-Aa. Predictably, Cryosphere is an album of ice-floe drift and polar ooze, for Glacial’s mission statement is explicitly to “transport[s] the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen.” So we have here a document of chthonic minimalist soundscapes and deep-drone seclusion, of dark ambient, yes, though with goth-gloom (cf., Cold Meat Industries) and gore-core (cf., Malignant) gratifyingly withheld. Siberians Closing the Eternity launch out with “Pulse of Iceilence,” sur-realized with something vibraphoney that has you hypothermically adrift, beset by chiming and rumbling, buzzing and dark trickling icewater. Northaunt’s “Crocker Land” is one of endless vistas of tundra and frozen wastes interspersed with abyssal yawnings, its harmonized droning akin to Biosphere stretched out in a wind-tunnel. Tho-so-aa’s “Cryotesk” carries a submerged menace, distant sounds fleeting, found sounds swimming up, chthonic rumble, sonar-tones, enshrouded in reverberant mist. Lightwave and TUU ghost in too, with their own versions of slow-shift minimalism. Troum take field recordings harvested from Bremen harbor and fold their reverberant time-stretched implosions into glass singings. Possibly the most literal-mindedly representative of all the pieces herein, their “Giascei” is 12-minutes of desolate drift, attended by creaks, groans, and thumps, recalling the lost sub-lull of NWW's Salt Marie Celeste. Aidan Baker satisfies himself with guitar alone, and it’s plenty, as he layers it from wisps of gossamer crepuscularity, slowly swelling, with striations of ever more chimes and blurs of motifs, into a complex weave of plate-shifting textures; he makes of “Beneath the Ice” what sounds a denser more active derivation from Roach’s dusky Midnight Moon fretymology. Netherworld himself proposes “Kryos,” an eldritch depths-sounding on which he notably plays “old gates” (!). Finally the Lord of Nu-Dark-Age himself, Oöphoi, proposes “Cold Sun,” a long slow crawl of textured rumble through elemental frozen arcana. Ultimately more stark than dark, Cryosphere evokes wan light, ashen haze, and lost horizons glinting in boreal dawn. An expertly rendered compendium of extreme remotion in the most vivid of monochrome—Big chill. (AL) • www.glacialmovements.com Back To Top |
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