Saturday, November 28, 2009

Real Esate

Real Estate (Woodsist, 2009)

For: Yo La Tengo, The Clientele, early The Sea and Cake

Byline: “Budweiser, Sprite, do you feel alright?” Yes, thank you. I’ll have another.

How far back does nostalgia go? I guess a better question might be, how short back can nostalgia go? Real Estate’s lovely sun-soaked melodies and relaxing grooves take me back to a time... oh that time... four months ago. That’s right: I miss you, July. I miss being warm in your arms. I miss the road trips. I miss you combing my hair with your gentle winds, the carefree adventurism I feel on your stretches of open road. The sand between my toes, and the smell of the ocean. You miss it too, don’t you? Surely, the cold has its charms. But it’s just that it’s so freaking cold. Real Estate is the closest thing you’ll get to summer on your freezing wait for the bus to work on a Monday morning. It’ll transform that sip of coffee into a gulp of ice cold beer in a heartbeat. Close your eyes and you’re there. November? Forget about it.

Real Estate’s dedication to the summer months is apparent within the first minute of opener “Atlantic City.” It’s an instrumental piece that sways along with a predictable chord progression that tacks on some tropical/latin percussion grooves. It sort of seals the deal - the only thing missing is steel drums, which comes in the form of a guitar melody that sweeps in with a silvery, metallic tone. Much of the record has this overall feel - even “Snow Days,” which actually sounds like an oxymoron on an album otherwise indebted heavily to the hammock. Lots of reverb, lots of open washes, echoes, and tinny timbres make for a reflective surface. Listening to Real Estate is almost like watching the sun shine off the ocean; a glimmering, emotive dance of light.

When I say “predictable,” I mean that in the best way possible, if that’s even possible. Indeed, much of Real Estate’s song bank sounds suspiciously familiar. The group comes dangerously close to ripping off Yo La Tengo on at least a couple of occasions, especially on “Rock the Beach.” But given the preciseness of delivery, the swelling builds of guitars laying improvised lines gently on top of one another in a colorful wash makes it excusable. After all, Real Estate’s subtly psychedelic meanderings come at least close to some of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’s best moments. The chord progressions are all so simple, yet strongly constructed and stable. Melodies are nearly built-in, and the songs roll out of the shimmering guitars in harmonized pentatonic fashion like on “Fake Blues,” a song based primarily around one basic chord and scale.The same could be said for “Suburban Beverage,” which combines a meditative bass line and a gently pawed guitar for a floating groove. It functions as a light and feathery bed for the song’s hook to relax on: “Budweiser, Sprite, do you feel alright?” Getting lost in such a euphoric moment makes it easy for the song’s six minutes to fly by as crescendos and climaxes come and go without ever being overbearing.

Despite my attempt at a detailed analysis of the music above, in reality, the band requires little to no real thinking or effort on the part of the listener at all. Real Estate simply plays what you want to hear, exactly when you want to hear it. It’s a truly liberating record for indie rock. It’s begging us to forget all those weird tunings and jazzy chord voicings, those genre-bending, politically charged samples being used or the math-y time signature shifts. The term “KISS,” just like Real Estate, is perfect mantra for the summer months. Beer. Sun. Fun. Keep it simple, stupid. Thank you, Real Estate, for reminding us.

--Craw’z 11/28/2009

Real Estate Official MySpace

Friday, November 27, 2009


Metafiction (On the Edge, 10.09)

For: Kode 9, Loudspeaker Speaker Meets Clearly Human, Joker

Byline: The Scottish DJ marks a bold path out of the ghetto of dubstep with his pastoral, expansive debut. Originally published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

It makes sense that late 2009 would see the release of DFRNT’s Metafiction. The past four years were a relatively harrowing ride, with UK dubstep rising from a grimy, bleak view of post-rave burnout and urban blight from Burial, Skream, Boxcutter, and Kode 9, only to be reappropriated into a slightly more clubby and communal form by Zomby and Joker and 2000F. Coming on the tail end of this movement, Metafiction is a pastoral breath of fresh air into the dubstep arena that seems more focused on the late night chill out sessions of Ibeza than the horrors of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting.

DFRNT meticulously crafts soundscapes that are easy to get lost in, which slowly move from endlessly deep bass hits to washes of sine wave synths that pulse over the track like an amphetamine rush. The move is effortless and completely at ease, contrasted with the easy generalization of dubstep being a paranoid, deeply affected take on electronic dance music. The skittish hiccups and pitch-shifted voices of anguished bluesmen and hip hop artists being dragged through their own nightmares of urban decay are replaced with syncopated hand-claps, delicate high-hat tips, new age piano lines and flute. Man, you gotta love that flute.

If we can call this anything, we can call it post-dub, a step back from the step back. Dubstep started mainly as a reaction against an out-of-control techno bent on manufacturing the problems it promised escape from. Dubstep was the equivalent of waking up the next morning after the ecstasy-fueled party with someone else’s blood on your shirt. That scary pit in the bottom of your stomach was made audible. Some of the aforementioned dubstep pioneers stripped techno of all its auspices and brought it down to the brass tacks of heavy bass, sparse two-step rhythms, heavily processed left-field vocal samples, and an omnipresent deep buzz of sub-bass.

Metafiction pays homage to this sonic palate before blowing it wide open in order to incorporate DFRNT's expansive grooves and glacial tempo changes. Instead of the occasional hit of the snare drum, we are treated to a deep, almost polyrhythmic groove in “Landscapes.” The ascending piano lines float in and out of a bass line that weaves in and out of a beat that consists of more than a snare hit looped ad nauseam. In fact, moments like this abound, leaving us asking ourselves what did we do to deserve this beauty? “Winter” sounds like a Knife slowburner with haunted synth lines over a piano line stolen straight out of a New Age handbook. In any other setting this would sound ridiculous but in the hands of Scottish DFRNT, these cheesy piano lines are given a gravitational weight that propels the track forward more than the bass line.

It appears that long players are making a come back in 2009 with the Flaming Lips double album Embryonic and Leyland Kirby’s triple disc Sadly, the Future is not what it was. Metafiction is a feat. Clocking in at a little over two hours, it covers a surprisingly limited terrain. This, however, works in the album’s favor when its main objective is to convey a sense of mood and gradual movement out of the dubstep ghetto rather than a stylistic showcase. The wonderful thing about the album’s monolithic sound is that there isn’t a bad track; instead burrowed within each one are delightful flourishes and nuances that make the album so enjoyable. A smooth jazz flute trills on top of a completely mellowed out DJ scratch on “Headspace,” which is one of those moments that in any other context would make you want to punch yourself in the face. In the hands of DFRNT, this is music to make love to.
If Metafiction, with all its collected sobriety and sexy new age pastiche, is any indication of where dubstep is headed in 2010, I am all aboard.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Sleep Whale

Houseboat (11.09, Western Vinyl)

For: Here We Go Magic, Years, Rachel's

Byline: A textured and powerfully moving record that skillfully balances the band's bifurcated pop and ambient sensibilities. Originally published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

In indie rock nomenclature, “Whale” has become the new “Wolf”, which had become the new “Black”, which in turn had become the new “Death”. In 2009 we have already seen releases by Freelance Whales, Or, the Whale, Noah and the Whale, Forget the Whale, and, lest we forget, The Devil Whale and White Whale. It looks like we have another onomastic epidemic on our hands, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the seventies, when everyone was naming their bands after geographical locations. With that said, you’d have to expect that at least one of these groups can live up to their favorite mammals’ mysterious, slow drift through the vast expanse of the oceans. If there is one “Whale” group that can do this it is Sleep Whale with their 2009 release, Houseboat.

FACT: Whales don’t ever really sleep. Because they are conscious breathers (they can’t take breaths while unconscious, unlike most other mammals) they can’t ever snooze like we can. The brains of whales are thought to compensate for this by shutting down one hemisphere at a time to get the rest they need piecemeal, so part of the day a whale is swimming through a hazy, half-awake/half-asleep existence. This is an apt metaphor for the sound Sleep Whale are going for. It is beautiful when a band’s name and the imagery evoked by it coincide as if by some benevolent cosmic force.

Hailing from Denton, TX, the collective known as Sleep Whale craft beautifully arranged songs from a rotating ensemble of acoustic guitars, violins, cellos, occasional woodwinds, a plethora of other assorted instruments, and sampled electronic programming. Of the thirteen gorgeous tracks on Houseboat, only a conservative handful feature vocals, and when they are present they are kept low in the mix, sounding like far-off whale song. The songs are structured around a few repeated instrumental lines, letting the occasional players of the extended Sleep Whale family fill in the cracks with delicious flourishes. A move that is positively irresistible is the occasional use of electronically manipulated vocal sampling, à la The Kallikak Family, featured extensively on “Light Tunnel”. The keyed up female vocal sample that follows the lilting violin line and mournful martial drumming is a place I want to live my life in.

The first single off of Houseboat, “Cotton Curls”, is a fairly good indicator of where this band could go if they didn’t let their ambient and chamber pop leanings overwhelm their penchant for middle-of-the-road indie rock songs. Fortunately for us, they lean much more heavily towards the former. A similar band in the ambient/pop balancing act that has put out an amazing and criminally overlooked album is Sleep Whales’ Western Vinyl labelmates Here We Go Magic. The formula that makes these bands so viable in both spheres is not the obligatory pop song/ambient song album structure but the actual tension going on beneath the surface of each song. Each pop song sounds like it was built from the ground up, piling an indie rock verse/chorus song structure atop a swirling, nebulous cloud of intricate instrumentation and electronic manipulation. The ambient songs are held together by a compositional fidelity to deliberate pacing and mood, with each song having a clear arc and peak.

Perhaps there is no better evidence of structuring than the album’s most gorgeous instrumental track, “Roof Sailing” (an apt name for houseboat living), a simple looped acoustic guitar line with a bowed violin laid over the top and processed harmonica or harmonium, with some neat sounding synth washes and hiccuping electronics. These increase on a linear scale in both intensity and frequency until they reach a boiling point that marks the introduction of an underwater drum kit pounded with the ferocity of a killer whale. It has occurred to me while listening to Houseboat just how similar this album sounds to another evocative masterpiece, Appleseed Cast’s Low Level Owl. Both records are recorded similarly, with atmospherics far outweighing innate pop sensibilities. The shoo-in example for this comparison is “Still Drumming”, with its Sung Tongs era atonal acoustic guitars and underwater vocals, and climatic revelry of drums.

These nomenclature trends come in cycles, as we have already seen with “Crystal” and “Antlers” running their courses (culminating, and dying, in the obvious move of combining the two), but we will forever have The Antlers and Crystal Castles as postmarks on the twisting road of band naming. Sleep Whale will forever be the crème de la crème of the “Whales”. That is, until my band, Death Whale destroys them all.

Ryan H.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Adelyn's pick of the month: Themselves

Crownsdown (10.09, anticon)

For: Subtle, Boom Bip, Cannibal Ox

Byline: Guess who's Back? Jeffrey 'Jel' Logan and Adam 'Doseone' Drucker erect a teetering monument to fallen hip-hop heroes.

Both Jel and Doseone are elder statesmen in the world of left-field/avante-garde hip-hop, and this being their 10 year anniversary, the duo known as themselves pen a fitting and nostalgic look back at the artform that some claim the anticon imprint saved or ruined for the whole world. Not considering myself a hip-hop purist, I have always been thrilled by Themselves experimental tendencies. Doseone's hyper-kinetic, polyrhythmic, totally cryptic, nasally raps and Jel's genre-mashing soundscapes that lets tracks wander instead of jumping down your throat. With Crownsdown I am not saying the script has been flipped, but there are certainly more indicators that point this album back to hip-hop's golden age than to the blurry line of I-have-no-idea-what-to-call-this anticon artistry. Stylistic nods abound, from the yes-ya'lls of Rakim to the aggressive braggadocio of Wu-Tang Clan to the already nostalgic nod of Dax Pierson's auto-tuned voice on "You Ain't it". Drucker's takes on a million different characters at once, from his multi-layered high nasal free association sing-song melodies to the snarling M.C who throws down threats, come ons, and bewildering non-sequiturs. There is a legion of voices and personas within Drucker's stage-personna, each taking equal turns at bat.These delightful discoveries of hip-hop evolution are not hidden in the details like in albums past, instead these self-evident head nods slap you right in the face.

The "guess who's backs?" concede to Themselves sounding like a newly minted Themselves about halfway through the record with the introduction of one of 2009's best singles "Daxstrong". I don't think I have ever heard Doseone rap with so much speed and sincerity, after mentioning "15 passenger vans" and rolling over on "black ice", the exact accident that paralyzed Subtle member and sometimes Themselves collaborator Dax Pierson. From this point on the track takes a somber, elegiac turn that is light years away from the jump-off. This move flies completely under the radar thanks to Jel's virtuoso programming. Bump this in your car as you do donuts in the mall parking lot, or on a roadtrip where your fears of mortality consume you as you wonder if that is black ice or asphalt underneath your tires. Either way, Crownsdown is 2009's strongest and most effecting hip-hop release. It only took 10 years in the making.

Ryan H.

Oh, P.S You can download their mixtape, FREEhoudini, for FREE.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Leyland Kirby

Sadly, the Future is No Longer What it Was (Forced Exposure, 11.09)

For: LaMonte Young, William Baskinski, Machinefabriek

Byline: You need this in your life. Over 4 hours of some of the most elegiac drones and melancholy piano pieces you will ever hear.

Haunted tape machines. Floating over mist covered marshes. A burning house. A choir of ghosts. By sheer breadth and composition these are some of the most sadly-beautiful pieces of experimental/neo-classical/drone moments ever put to tape, complete masterpieces of expertly crafted soundscapes. I can't think of a more moving or gorgeous release this year. Coming to critics attentions in the last couple of years under the name The Caretaker, Kirby unleashes a watershed of compositional brilliance whose sheer megaton load is only eclipsed by the intense emotional effect that it has on the listener.

Sounding like they are coming from another room, Leyland Kirby's ethereal drones and waves of down-layered synths surface up through the pavement and match the noisy buzz of the city streets. These perfectly executed ambient pieces, crafted around turntables and synths are the perfect addendum to the more straight ahead classical pieces that bookend the beginning and end of the album. These compositions are some of the most elegiac and pastoral imaginings of classical expressionism, evocative piano compositions atop layers of effect laden ambience and lovingly crafted drones. You can tell that Kirby is functioning on a much different level of musical virtuosity than many of his drone peers.

Compared to 2009's best release Ben Frost's By The Throat (this could be a viable runner up) which paints a picture of apocalyptic dread, I would call Sadly, The Future... post-apocalyptic nostalgia. There are moments of terrifying swells of noise that serve as a trusting companion on your Road (a-hem) that let you know that danger always lurks near, but overpowering that is a powerful sense of loss and memory. A profound nostalgic look back at how far our society came, and everything we lost.

Taking the whole album in at one sitting is impossible, within a few days is a stretch, but finding an hour and a half to be alone, with a book or walking home from school at night, Sadly, The Future... feels more like a gift than an actual album. Well, a gift that you spent 30 $ on. Oh, well. Before being formally released in its physical format, small snippets of each songs kept the monetary considerations far in the back of my mind. If there is something missing from your Christmas (or late Dec. 10th birthday) make sure this is on it.

Ryan H.


BEAK> (Invada Records, 2009)

For: Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk

Byline: Geoff Barrow doing straight krautrock? Where do I sign? Originally posted on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

BEAK>! Sorry, I just love saying that. BEAK>! BEAK>! BEAK>! It’s short, simple, abrupt, stark, hungry, dry, triangular, pointy, quick, and sharp. As these are all adjectives I’d also use to describe the group’s sound, it is thus the perfect name for this, the off-shoot krautrock camp of Geoff Barrow (also of a little band called Portishead... heard of ‘em?). BEAK>’s music comes from a bleak, dark, hollow space governed by a predetermined push-pull relationship between the opposing forces of structured rules and abandoned improvisation. The band’s self-described “strict guidelines” have primarily to do with the recording process. BEAK>’s framework is refreshingly simple: Three members, three basic instruments: drums, synth, and bass. Vocals appear on about half of the material throughout these tracks but when they do, they come in dreadful (that is, “full of dread”), anguished moans of unintelligible lyrics, functioning on a largely instrumental level. All of the music was recorded live in a single room over a 12-day session with no overdubs allowed. Arrangements were then created through cut and paste editing, but on the whole, what you hear in BEAK> is essentially what happened.

You can literally hear the band’s creative space within the album. Firstly, there are some ambient room noises that were kept sunken within the mix - a door closing, a light chat between bandmates, etc. Also, between the bareness of the bass, crystal clear mix of wetted-drums and constantly warping and evolving synth tones are wide voids of open space. It’s a sound that spreads itself across a vast range that is easy to find yourself inside of, walking around, feeling and exploring the sonic area’s breadth. It’s an altogether enticing, inviting feel that draws the listener into the band’s own world.

Another byproduct of the band’s self-imposed limitations is that a sort of kraut-combo whose basic foundational structure might be likened to a jazz trio is created. The two types of organizations similarly focus on specialized roles of performance, and rely on these individual roles to guide instantaneous compositions through fleeting improvisations and gut-feel development. Songs often succeed into pitch-bending, atonally-stabbing “solos,” or embellishments of an originally stated theme in a post-everything sort of way. The band’s intensity rises and falls with the direction of the songs, and before you know it the next track has arrived, the previous five minutes’ events passing almost like a trick of the senses with a surprisingly urgent efficiency.

BEAK>’s songs fall into two basic categories on this record, that of either slow, lurching meditations, sometimes disguised as ballads, or more up-tempo, punchy rockers. The latter style finds the band combining the steady straight eighth-note feel and psychedelic, modal harmonic centers of Neu! with the windswept nihilism of Joy Division. Album standout “Iron Action,” is a pretty clear-cut example of this formula. The drums roll out with a steady groove centered around an anchored backbeat with bass drum hits on the up-beats, a trick ripped right out of Can’s playbook. The feel plows forward underneath an awesome exercise in knob twisting, synthesized acrobatics. The keyboard tone bounces and skips along with an octave-jumping nervousness, sometimes falling into place with triplets, sometimes more random, like a spinning oblong-shaped wheel. All of this is accompanied by that lone, submerged wail of a voice, drenched in effects and shrouded in catharsis. The overall feel of pieces like this one, as well as “Backwell,” “I Know,” and “Blagdon Lake,” (an amazing song - think Kraut-meets-shoegaze glory) seem to follow in line with some of the more kraut-leaning tendencies of Portishead’s latest album (as in “The Rip”), however sacrificing pop accessibility for noisy experimentalism.

It is within the slower tunes that the band’s emotional depth and pure range of volume is expressed. Aside from being one of the record’s creepiest songs, by the time “Ham Green” arrives three tracks into the album, it’s also a fervent release of energy that comes as a relief. An austere bass line has a building inertia that leads to a sleeping-dragon climax, slow and epic and huge with its crash cymbal and distorted crunch, yet also very subdued and controlled.

In the storied lexicon of krautrock, BEAK> remains one of the more difficult albums of perhaps the genre’s entire history. While Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk all represented the style as complimentary (however simultaneously reactionary) to the sensibilities and popular forms of the time (see: disco, punk, and even classic rock), BEAK> seems less concerned about its place within the current musical landscape and more exists as its own weird anomaly - an unfailing challenge that is tireless in its intrigue and mystery, yet stone-faced in its refusal to be fashionable, hip, or even remotely accessible. It’s a music’s music, and while its exclusion from any year-end “best of” lists is damn-near guaranteed, it is nevertheless an enjoyable learning experience and a very valuable listen.

--Craw'z 11/17/2009

Official MySpace

Monday, November 16, 2009

Helen Money

In Tune (10.09, Table of the Elements)

For: Telegraph Melts, Mick Barr, Ben Frost

Byline: The Second City cellist's sophomore album is both joyful and gloomy, triumphant and terrifying, often all in the same breath. Originially published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

The curvaceous back of the cello inspires some interesting visual analysis. To some it resembles the supple femininity of a woman’s body, with its husky timbre and smoke-ring seductive vibrato. To others, the faint hourglass shape is more akin to a black widow's territorial marking, a man-eater to be kept at arms length with its sudden shrieks, guttural moans, and penchant for low, dark passages. Throughout her second album under the Helen Money moniker, Alison Chesley's Jekyll/Hyde cello possesses the bodies of both.

My favorite piece of music written for and performed by the cello up to this point is John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil. A liturgy written for the Virgin Mary, the cellos in Taverner’s composition pierce the sky with their personifications of anguish, the ear piercing screeches and aching beauty of the instrument's contemplative low rumble tied together by the piece's sublime bowed fugues.

Like Taverner’s The Protecting Veil, Helen Money’s compositions defy a separation between the bifurcated range of the cello. In Tune moves from the unearthly beauty of contemplative drones and looping passages, to moments of distorted and reverb-heavy, frenetic cello-attacks that would leave even a legendary guitar shredder like Mick Barr speechless. These movements do not announce themselves in any traditional compositional sense. For example, the album's title track moves between both extremes within a time-frame compressed down from a lesser cellist’s entire album. This sudden attack on the senses causes one to question the very nature of distortion on a cello. Is the only difference between the two passages of music a change in tonal fidelity? Or is there some stark metaphysical change in emotion orchestrated by Chesley herself? The soft/loud dynamic isn't split between tracks (with the exception of the Minutemen cover, “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing”) so much as it represents Chesley’s arc of neo-classical ideas within each singular composition.

I had heard Chesley’s work in two of my favorite albums of 2009 before I heard her album in its entirety. The emotional weight she brings to Mono’s Hymn to the Immortal Wind, and particularly on Russian Circles Geneva, is astounding. Recorded in Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio, the album's production lends a gritty analog edge to an instrument that has real teeth in the hands of the right person. And teeth it certainly has. Chesley's cello has the snarl of post-apocalyptic composer Ben Frost’s best work. At the same time, Chesley’s heavy, droning soundscapes call to mind fellow Second Citiers, Pelican with their heavy-without-power-chords expanse of equal parts hope and gloom.

The past few years have seen enough insanely talented cellists cropping up to make us critics question the line between rock and roll and classical music. Telegraph Melts, Nat Baldwin, Cursive and CJ Boyd are all indebted to Alison Chesley’s pioneering cello work. She brought the electric cello to the front stage of America’s consciousness with her original power-pop project Verbow. Since then she has helped musicians and directors of both film and stage voice their musical ideas in the way only a cello can. In Tune is out now on the highly prestigious Table of the Elements label.

Ryan H.

Friday, November 13, 2009


Prince of Truth (10.09, Constellations)

For: Lou Reed, Hanne Hukkelberg + Crowspath, Ben Frost

Byline: Carla Bozulich’s songs are compositional nightmarescapes of haunted Americana, clanging noise rock, and elegant chamber music heavier than anything you have heard this year. Originally posted on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

When we talk about “heavy” music what do we mean? Does “heavy” hold some sort of metaphysical weight that exists outside of the composition like genre, band members, volume, etc.? In considering what most people associate with heavy— metal, black clothes, long hair, ear-destroying walls of amps—dark imagery plays an integral role. Most people wouldn’t consider classical music heavy in that definition, right? If we strip “heavy” of its connotative trappings and look at a piece in terms of mood and compositional arrangement, then we get a very different definition. A track is heavy because it traps you under the weight of what you feel, the emotion that it conveys. Lou Reed? Heavy. Ben Frost? Brutal. Nick Cave? Whoa. Evangelista? The most freakin’ metal album I have heard all year.

Prince of Truth is a revelation. Evangelista lives comfortably inside the dark impasses that fellow Constellations labelmates only flirted with in their most tortured post-rock soundscapes. Carla Bozulich’s songs are compositional nightmarescapes of haunted Americana, clanging noise rock and elegant chamber music. The songs themselves are compositionally impossible, assembling a broad swath of musicians from Montreal mainstays to Xiu Xiu’s / Congs for Brums percussion master Chess Smith to new Wilco member Nels Cline (!); it takes a group of musicians this talented to totally dismantle song compositions with such grace and force. It is Bozulich’s post-gothic purr-to-howl that ties all the disparate elements into a dark passage of a jarring, ferocious cacophony.

“The Slayer” opens with some Metal Machine Music swirls of distortion drenched guitars and a churning sea of discordant melodies until Bozulich’s gothic, otherworldly voice announces, “This is the speed of light…The angels walk below / slicing metal by remote control”. Yes! Let’s see Danzig write something that unabashedly terrifying or hear him deliver it with such creepy detachment. Amazingly, “The Slayer” is pulled together with a melodic chorus. This is one of my favorite moments on the album, partly because, oddly enough, Bozulich sounds a lot like Ian MacKaye of Fugazi. It is uncanny; she even nails the breathless pant of MacKaye at his most accusatory. This is, of course, Fugazi on a dangerously high level of codeine.

“I Lay There in Front of Me Covered In Ice” is a sprawling Americana ballad in the key of Nick Cave. It is a coy little piece that never fully reveals its teeth until long after the fact. “Iris Didn’t Spell” is the most compositionally complex, featuring a minute and a half organ, strings, and drum segue that turns any sort of traditional composition on its ear. “Darkness falls / the stars explode /but they don’t die, they just can’t be together” is stated with such a resigned sense of fatalism you can feel the weight of the words even if you can’t decipher their meaning. That goes for most of Bozulich’s songwriting— each line is conveyed with such sincerity and dread that a interpretation isn’t needed. The lyrics push along the mournful dirge, and not vice-versa.

This brings me to the centerpiece of the album, “You Are Jaguar,” the most accessible and darkest track, and, truthfully, one of 2009’s best slices of music. A pop-apocalyptic burner, in which Bozulich’s voice is forced to its most heroic, standing on top of the stage lights screaming “You are a Jaguar! / In Catacombs / In racecars! / Of my love in feathers!” Let the wild rumpus of guitar freak-outs start! This is jaw dropping stuff here.

Prince of Truth can and should be compared favorably to Ben Frost’s critically lauded By The Throat as a vocal/spoken word addendum. They share a similar compositional weight in both theme and substance: heavier than Dokken, heavier than Dio, heavier than Priest, man.

Ryan H.

Thursday, November 12, 2009


Bathing in the Betterment of Cold Drink (03.09, Circle into Square)

For: Odd Nosdam, Belong, Guillermo Scott Herren

Byline: Bottomless soundscapes that skirt the edges of instrumental hip-hop, minimal electronica, and weird science.

Heading back to march for this one, but for very good reason. If I ever got enough motivation to create music I would pretty much want to sound like a carbon copy of BRE'R. BRE'R owns everything I love about outsider instrumental hip-hop, electronica, whatever. BRE'R lets his compositions roam, burrowing little niches of early anticon soundscapes of cLOUDEAD and Odd Nosdam, to the next door sounding left-field sampling of Belong, to the manual dexterity of genre mashing of Mr. Scott Herren. The looping instrumentation of strangely tuned and syncopated guitars on "Everyone Has One" and "Birf Crawl" display a forward thinking instrumental bleed over that reminiscent of 2009's best single "Quitters Raga" by Gold Panda. Bathing is a relatively short album, but the sheer number of musical ideas packed into these 27 minutes is overwhelming. Well, not overwhelming in the bad way, but in the sense where each track is bottomless, where the discoveries get weirder and weirder the further down you get. Watch the BBC's Blue Planet episode 2: The Deep and you will understand what I mean. If there is a line that divides instrumental hip-hop, weird minimal electronica, and buried drones and field recordings BRE'R inadvertently stepped over it on his haste to chase the next musical idea that presented itself in the distance. Another super solid release for Circle Into Square this year.

Ryan H.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009


Black Square (10.09, Impose/Deleted Art)

For: By the End of Tonight, Blood Brothers, Fugazi

Byline: One day we will die so let’s rock out while we still can. Or, how I learned to stop worrying and learn to love frantic Canadian post-dance-punk. Originally published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

What’s the point? A post-Cold War nihilism has infected the mainframe. Without a fatalism to lash out against, our lives seem pretty pointless. Even the singer in your band is straining to hide the fact that all this bores the hell out of him. We need something immediate to fight against. Something more ominous than the slow death of global warming, depleting resources, the wretched poverty of elsewhere lapping up on our shores. Then we could dance. We could dance all night because tomorrow might be the day when the men in starched white shirts and sensible ties will push that red button. Or maybe there is no button. Maybe just a sorrowful word spoken through the scratchy radio static. Either way, we could really cut a rug. We could rage all night and really mean it.

Listening to Black Square by Canadian post-punk outfit DD/MM/YYYY is a thematic epilogue to Sidney Lumet’s Failsafe. The Cold War ended and this is how we thank you, with an utter disregard for your Ptolemaic sense of universal order, of opposing forces with good and evil. Black Square is a dance party with no backbeat, no courtship ritual, no schmoozing, no trips to the bathroom with your dealer boyfriend. Just pure cathartic flailing of appendages and time signatures; so chaotic we forget about nice logical ideas such as mutual assured destruction and strategic stockpiling of leaky uranium barrels.

Picking up where the Blood Brothers left off, DD/MM/YYYY begins with the strongest track on the album “Bronzage.” Blasting through each time signature and staccato tag-team vocals, apocalyptic blasts of feedback-drenched squalor combine with a whole keyboard cache of effects piled on top. This is a summons, a séance, a retro throwback to a time when imminent death made people feel alive. The crass commercialism of the 80’s, the excess of Studio 54, the mutual apathy of the nineties, your old Nintendo and all the times when people just wanted to forget, are thrown in a blender and randomized through a computer. The output is “Uh, oh, uh, oh nothing matters!” shouted in gang unison by some misfit kids from Toronto.

The album centerpiece “Infinity Skull Cube” features classic start-stop post-punk of This Heat or The Fall married with an almost uncanny Fugazi-like shouted chorus. And all this sans a single power chord. The weaving of guitar lines and outer-space synth coupled with unbelievably complex time changes can be a death wound to a band whose music exists as an interesting exercise but has no soul. Black Square is the exact opposite, with tracks such as “Infinity Skull Cube” expelling their wide-eyed epithets of vocal and instrumental barbs like projectile missiles, exploding so powerfully in your psyche that you are forced to stop what you are doing. DD/MM/YYYY are not bereft of irresistible hooks or missionary-like zeal.

DD/MM/YYYY provide a few respites on the way. The instrumental exploration on “Birdtown” has a jazzy swing that recalls early fellow Canadian citizens Do Make Say Think. The slow burn of “They” feels a little misplaced, coming early in the album and conceding to the lengthy “Birdtown” as the middle of the album slow-jam interlude. The album ends as strong as it starts, finishing with some of the catchiest songs on the album, including “I’m Still in the Wall” and “Digital Haircut.”

I’m not sure why Black Square elicits such intense emotions. Perhaps listening to something as structured as a dance song—with its assured peaks and valleys and verse chorus arrangements—completely dismantled, blown up with a mega-ton bomb, and then reassembled by a barbarian society is so liberating, so against the cold logic of a world seemed bent on destroying itself. Dance punk for world peace!

Ryan H.

DD/MM/YYYY Myspace

Friday, November 6, 2009

Russian Circles

Geneva (10.09, Suicide Squeeze)

For: Pelican, Do Make Say Think, The Brown Book

Byline:The Chicago post-rock trio muster all the hugeness and intensity of a band six times their size in the most structurally perfect and relentless album of their career. Originally Published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers LLC.

When Mono announced that their latest album Hymn to the Immortal Wind would feature a 28 - count 'em - 28 piece orchestra in addition to the Japanese fivesome, I nearly threw up on myself with excitement. Finally, the culmination of everything post-rock had been striving to obtain, a brutally heavy album with moments of unparalleled euphoric crescendos. I thought it would be the end-all be-all of rock as we knew it. When the album came in the mail, I listened to it over and over, perplexed. Where were the trumpets heralding the rapture? Why hadn’t my room caved in because of how awesome it was? It sounded like Mono, but with more strings, in fact if no one told me the album featured a 28 piece orchestra I wouldn’t have really thought twice.

Now, fast-forward seven months and Russian Circles release their newest album Geneva to little fanfare. Why should there be? Three guys playing heavy soundscape post-rock, with a guitar, drum, bass and a newly added string section consisting of a cello and a violin. Well, people should be paying attention to Geneva precisely because, with its microcosm of members, it tackles and surpasses the weight of Mono’s Hymn on every front. Never have Russian Circles' compositions been fraught with such terrifying force, breakneck tempo changes, soul charging crescendos and overwhelmingly beautiful soundscapes. Geneva sounds like everything Mono’s album should have been, but on a shoestring budget and a disproportionate amount of chest crushing power.

Leading the cavalcade like the first shot of battle, “Fathom” comes out of a hazy drone of bowed cellos and a discordant guitar line before launching into one of the heaviest compositions Russian Circles have ever put to tape. Brooding, wounded and menacing, Brian Cook’s rumbling bass-lines take the lead and fill in lock-step with Dave Turncrantz’s frenetic drumming. Geneva is a bass players album, Mike Sullivan’s brutal riffs often concede to fall in behind the highly rhythmic, seismically charged bass lines that propel this album forward. There are moments on “Fathom” and the title track “Geneva” that make my guts feel like they are going to fall out.

Structurally, Geneva is near flawless. Right out of the gate we are subjected to two songs that completely destroy the notion that post-rock is only listenable for the big pay off, that emotionally manipulative, slow-built crescendo that is supposed level you flat. The moment that makes buying the album worth it. Russian Circles, deconstruct the crescendo-core myth by playing with teeth from the word go. There is no waiting around to be leveled by an all out assault of spiritual power-chord ascendance. It isn’t until “Melee” that we get a first-wave reprieve and that the cello and violins make their formal entrance. Following a similar trajectory as 2008's Stations most gorgeous track “Versus”, “Melee” is a slow burner starting out with a fade-in of restrained guitars and a soaring violin before the palm muted major chords and tribal drumming swoop in alerting you that this is a false summit. Russian Circles are back to take years off your hearing capacity like they never left.

The pseudo-reprieve comes just in time: “Hexed All” is a testament to post-rocks epic breakdown; A buzzing, shimmering masterpiece of mood and punctuation with moments of restrained classical beauty from a string section that can fit easily into a crammed recording studio.

The album fades out with a few more peaks and valleys, the opening guitar line of “Malko” is a echoing, technical marvel, reminiscent of late Mogwai (see “Kings Meadow” off The Hawk is Howling). If we were to take Geneva as a single composition the last two tracks, “The Mountain Comes to Muhammad” and “Philos,” would be the diminuendo to a powerful and abrupt crescendo, waves of crashing power-chords and uplifted fists in a dingy concert venue in some burned over city in the Midwest. A sound that could fill exclusive two night sets in New York’s finest concert halls is being played with all the piss, vinegar, blood and sweat in your city’s smallest all-ages venues or dingiest dive bars. You can take the Russian Circles out of the rust-belt but you can’t take the rust-belt out of the Russian Circles.

Thursday, November 5, 2009


...For The Whole World to See (Drag City, 02.09)

For: The Stooges, The Who, Bad Brains

Byline: Prisoners of Rock and Roll. Proto-Punk from three African American brothers that was light years ahead of its time.

1971. Yeah, 1971. Why is this year significant? Because this is the real year punk broke. This is a story that should be legendary, shoot, this band should be legendary, but like a lot of visionary bands Death fell to the ax of the major label before the general populous could understand their genius. After watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan three African American brothers from Detroit picked up instruments and began playing Rhythm and Blues standards and Rock and Roll classics. This was before they saw Alice Cooper perform live. It was after that that everything changed. I don't know what happened but in 1971 Death entered into the recording studio, churning out 7 songs that have been lost to the world until the nice folks at Drag City did us all a solid and salvaged the master tapes and re-released a truly epic proto-punk masterpiece. Knowing nothing about this back story this album would stand on its own. Truly arresting from the first windmilled power chord of "Keep on Knocking" to the last strangled riff on "Politicians in My Eyes", Death were visionaries in every sense of the word, heralding a musical trend that wouldn't be coined for at least 7 years to come (this was before the internet). Death's music encapsulates everything we love about early punk recordings, loud, agitated, political, extremely melodic. Blasting through standard punk tropes in "Rock and Roll Prisoner", "Keep on Knocking" and "You're a Prisoner" sound way more blistering and frentic than anything that was put out at the time, this type of hyper melodicism wouldn't be matched until the early nineties when the SoCal punk bands pretended they were the Ramones. On it's own merits of these songs make a name for themselves, but it is the left-field flourishes that help ...For the Whole World to See to stand head and shoulders over any of their contemporaries. "Let the World Turn" is written as a Kinks like suite, with lengthy segues of an occasional major chord strummed guitar as Bobby Hackney's soulful croon fills the gaps between the silence, all this before breaking into a hyper ballad of three chord sonic assaults and a 45 second drum solo. "Freakin' Out" has a type of paranoid breakdown that owes its hugeness to an obvious Black Sabbath tip of the hat. Listening to Death is to peek into an alternate reality that might have been, Detroit could have been the next San Francisco, a haven for post-sixties wounded idealists who wanted to baptize themselves in the chemical choked rivers and machine gun clatter of the auto plants, they could have formed a truly dangerous coalition of pissed off anti-establishmentarians, with three black brothers calling themselves Death leading the charge. Sadly, they broke up in the same year refusing to change their name at Clive Davis' request. How punk rock is that? Huh, 1971!

Ryan H.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009


Derivative (10.09, Silber Records)

For: Birchville Cat Motel, German Shepherd, Silver Antlers

Byline: Bob Dylan, droned.

Being a pretty marginal fan of both metal and hip hop, I nevertheless get pretty giddy when I hear stuff by Girl Talk and Birchville Cat Motel. When my brother puts on Girl Talk in the car we begin a tag-team dissection of cultural/musical references. He is all over the hip-hop tracks like, "this is the Ying-Yang Twins, duh" and I've got the "Dude! That is The Band! or Yo! He is sampling Rainbow on this track!". I also get chills up my spine when I hear Birchville Cat Motel's thirty minute long dismantle of a single Iron Maiden riff on "Drawn Towards Chanting Chords". Not that I have any past with Iron Maiden, I don't think I have ever listened to a full album, BCM's meditation on that riff is just so heavy and beautiful it makes me want to do something with my life. So when I read that ambient/drone guitar pioneer Brian John Mitchell's project Remora would be releasing Derivative, which would follow suit in crafting guitar drones around cherished pop hooks I knew I had something amazing on my hands. Creating solo guitar drones in the style of an noisier Aidan Baker solo project, Remora tackles musical passages by Bob Dylan, Journey, Pere Ubu, Warrior Soul and Hefner. Not that you would be able to pick any of these songs out by any sort of compositional familiarity, not by a long shot. I still can't really figure them out. But with or without this knowledge going into this album, Derivative is a drone masterpiece. I wouldn't ever call drone piece catchy per say, but the album opener "Every Prince" has a gorgeous guitar upswell that nearly takes my breath away every time. If anything comes close to a drone single, this is it. A type of shoegazy beauty that defies categorization. Layer upon layer upon layer of hypnotic, swirling guitar parts stretch any pop tendencies into a meditative sea of clairvoyant noise. I know I am not using clairvoyant in the right sense of the word but it felt nice to write. Derivative is a stunnigly gorgeous album and stands on its own regardless of maybe, just maybe being able to pick out a Pere Ubu bass line. But Warrior Soul, I've never heard them before. Remora just made me a huge fan. Serious.

Ryan H.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Lightning Bolt

Earthly Delights (10.13, Load)

For: Dead C, Marnie Stern, Sun Ra

Byline: Earthly Delights of pure hedonistic sound worship from one of the best bands working in Noise today. Originally Published on Used by permission from In Your Speakers LLC.

All you need to know about Lightning Bolt can be learned in a five second clip from the Peter Glantz directed documentary The Power of Salad. Brian Chippendale, teetering on top of his sky-scraper high amp, makes a daring leap from atop and lands squarely in his seat in front of the drum set starting off the song, in time mind you, before blasting through another blitzberg of drum n’ bass hedonism. This display of pure kinetic energy and reckless disregard of health and well being can both describe a typical Lightning Bolt show and act as an introduction to the Providence, RI duo’s sixth studio album, Earthly Delights.

This far into their career, with a primitivist (and some say limited) set up, and with an incredibly well received preceding album, it would make sense for Lightning Bolt to make a sudden departure or drastically change up their sound. While most of the internet buzz greets Earthly Delights as another lock-stock step in Lightning Bolt’s discography, they make passing mention to some HUGE stylistic shifts that make Earthly Delights such a different and exciting album to listen to. Massive changes happen on the tiniest hinges in noise rock and so when someone as talented and universally acclaimed as Lightning Bolt start switching their style up, it is best we take notice.

Wonderful Rainbow has been hailed as the duo's most accessible album to date. I am making the case that Earthly Delights takes that claim and raises it a hyperbolic “their most accessible and diverse” laurel. Brian Chippendale still wails at his drum set like an abusive octopus and Brian Gibson still plays every position known to bassist-kind, providing rhythm as well as leads so virtuoso listeners will swear they recruited a guitarist. Lightning Bolt still sounds like Lightning Bolt, but with a few (major) stylistic changes.

The album opener “Sound Guardians” kicks off with a typical Lightning Bolt burst of pure unadulterated noise as Chippendale's martial drumming and Gibson’s distortion pedals channel a virtual tsunami of noise. Just about a minute into the track when things are about to get their most frenetic, Gibson unleashes a guttural squall of early nineties grunge-inspired chugga-chugga power chords before Chippendale begins another drum attack. These are moments when you realize that something you have heard on every Lightning Bolt album can still stop you dead in your tracks.

The departures are just as exciting. “Colossus” begins with an Earth-like minimalist bass line that builds slowly until it reaches a stoner-rock version of a Gregorian chant. A monolithic plainsong of noise worshipping beat sacrifice. In fact the Chippendale madness that we know and love doesn’t get into full swing until much after the halfway mark. “Sublime Freak” has a downright Surf Rock bass line, like Dick Dale on acid. “Funny Farm” features a ho-down bridge that is as equally catchy as it is brow furrowing. Country music? On a Lightning Bolt album? This is 2009 folks. Anything is possible.

The penultimate “S.O.S” is their most reckless, totally outta control burner on the album; just under four minutes of insanely talented thrash. “Transmissionary” rivals “Nation of Boar” as their most drone-tastic, repetitive opus on the album. Lasting over twelve minutes, “Transimissionary” is centered around a single looped riff of Gibson’s strangled bass. A powerfully muscular move not unlike Birchville Cat Motel’s legendary “Drawn Towards the Chanting Hordes” which takes one Iron Maiden chord and stretches into 30 minutes of ethereal bliss.

Brian Chippendale rivals Zach Hill as the most inventive and talented drummer working in music today, but to tell you the truth, Brian Gibson shines as the true star on this album. It is his insanely varied bass attacks on several different genres, put through a blender and recontextualized through his distortion pedals and alternate tunings, that gives this album the accessible and diverse feel that it has. His lines are catchier than they have ever been, faster and more jaw dropping. Gibson does things that the bass guitar was never supposed to do. Easily one of the most exciting and rewarding releases of 2009.