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- Welcome to the new KILLED in CARS
I center my relationship with music around KILLED in CARS. It is a "thank you" to the musicians who enrich my life, a way to reach people curious about expression through sound, and an attempt to creatively think about music. This site has thrived as a destination for discussion and listening thanks to its disregard for the canon and its dedication to making esoteric genres accessible. I appreciate your readership, and I hope that you choose to participate!
INSTRUCTIONS: Until now, KILLED in CARS has been an approach more than a single destination. This new layout is an attempt to centralize KiC activity in one place. While there is still content on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, for example, you no longer need to visit these services to have the full scope of what’s going on. All the links at the top of this page will display the content from the sites you’re used to visiting, while giving you the option to click straight through to said pages. Here are some tips to maximize your visit.
1. The blogs (1 and 2) are Tumblr (the current blog), and Blogger (the archive), respectively. You can click on that word and scroll down to read the most recent posts on each. At the bottom of each page, there is a link that will take you to the full pages. If you would like to explore the Tumblr page in depth, you can click here. If you want to see the Tumblr archive, click here. Lastly, to go through the entirety of the original site, click here.
2. Similarly, the two “VIDEOS” pages are my YouTube favorites and Vimeo likes, in that order. This allows you to see many videos in one place without clicking through to any other pages. You can click the link in the bottom left corners of each to see the actual channels I maintain on each service. You may also click here for the YouTube channel, and here for the Vimeo channel.
3. The forum is the Facebook wall RSS. This is where the most activity happens, and you can see the numerous videos, tracks, and concert listings we pass on here. You can also click here to join the group.
4. “MIXES” is my 8tracks mixes, while tracks represents both my SoundCloud uploads and favorites (click here). You can click “play” on any of my mixes and play them on this page without clicking through to the 8tracks profile (though you can do so by clicking here). Likewise, you can listen to tracks I upload to SoundCloud under “TRACKS,” but you can also go through a great deal of content by switching the drop menu to “Favorites.” There are many mixes there as well, all playable from this page.
5. Last.fm and Twitter are self-explanatory. Last.fm tracks my recent plays and “top” artists of late, and the group page. Twitter is a place to find label retweets, articles of interest, and my record ratings (click here). These ratings are generated from Rate Your Music, and you can click through to the page here, and you can browse the complete KiC list, from start to finish, by clicking here.
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Posts
In case you missed them, here are the links to the rare songs Actress put on twitter a while back. Obviously they’re jams.
Mad Stereo
C.L.A.W
Murder Plaza
My Weed Is Strong Blud
Metal Tiger
Parallel Worldenjoy~
Each iteration of the site serves a different purpose. While many people follow on Tumblr, and the Facebook page has quite a few likes, the Twitter site, which will share rare and out of print records (the original purpose of the site), lags far behind because it has only been relaunched since December. Click here to check it out. This is the list of albums that have appeared previously.
Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air.
It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to lose it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.
Edmond Jabès (via indigenousdialogues)AMFJ - BÆN
Here’s a pretty idiosyncratic release from Iceland. FALK released this album in December of ‘11, but the man behind AMFJ, Adalsteinn Jorundsson, has recently been sending some copies stateside, and you can order/listen on BandCamp as well (so much stuff going through BandCamp these days!). Strange Maine should have a few stateside physical copies on CD, and this packaging is really cool, with rich color and multiple panels of composite/superimposed photographs of the artist-in-motion that are very illustrative of the music.
My first impression of BÆN was how complimentary this album is to Arvo Zylo’s “333” record that I reviewed last year—both records feature their respective composers working alone in noise/industrial surroundings, and both composed their records within the confines of a single musical interface. In the case of AMFJ, Jorundsson works in a software package called Jeskola Buzz, which looks sort of like a freeware version of Reason. For those unfamiliar with the basic concept behind either of those bits of software, one makes sounds in virtual synth modules, which can then be combined in various configurations, run through one another or through effects, etc.
Though it’s a considerably more spacious environment than the RM1X sequencer that Zylo employed for his “333,” it’s still quite a self-imposed limitation compared to the resources most electronic musicians avail themselves of for any recording session. But under many conditions, I think these kinds of limitations can save folks a lot wasted energy spent in “paradox of choice” deliberations and keep the focus on creating the music itself. I remember reading a John McLaughlin quote about perfect freedom coming from perfect discipline, or something to that effect—though he was talking about keeping your chops in shape for improvisation, the concept translates into the world of composition/recording beautifully: pick a small palette of materials, learn to use them efficiently, almost unconsciously, and you’re ready for inspiration to strike.
AMFJ is often tagged as a power electronics/harsh industrial act. I definitely hear elements of those genres in this music, but BÆN definitely falls toward the more melodic/atmospheric end of the “harsh” continuum. Vocally, a couple of the tracks in the middle of the album (“Mammon” and “Retoria”) get into some really aggro vocal work, and Jorundsson sounds briefly like a 1000 year old tree struggling to stay upright in a punishing storm of percussion and metallic drones. But I think the best moments of the record show a lot of restraint—Lofun,” for example, dedicated to his fiance, features a ground-loop sounding hum interrupted by a curious percussion break which repeats multiple times. It’s a delicate piece that never rises above a mezzo piano, but it shows a lot of distinction in its poise. The opening track, “Utburdur Umskiptingur,” becomes loud and impenetrable, but it shows a lot of patience getting there, its sample of a child’s whine gradually layered with itself and effected in ways that emphasize the fundamental resonant points of the sample, like a shorter industrial-tinged take on Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room.”
My favorite piece, though, is the album’s closer, “Husid Andar.” The longest track at almost 9 minutes, Jorundsson sings in a clear, clean voice, grasping at transcendence amid a dense clatter of fluctuating synths, metallic clanging, menacing machines and idling motors. I hear some awesome late-oughts Ulver vibes at moments: subtle vocal harmonies push through the din, trainlike rhythms rise and drown in acid reverb, and a long minute of silence hangs in the air at the end of the disc. There are some great ideas happening in this piece, and I hope that future AMFJ efforts continue to work with the epic potential in both harsh noise and near-silence.
—Scott Scholz
The Dept. of Harmonic Integrity - In Deck and Depth, A Whim, A Weft
A Beest has just been born in Iowa City, and among the first releases of this new label is the debut of The Dept. of Harmonic Integrity. Before I even begin to address this music, though, I have to say that I find this album art almost impossibly beautiful. Like fetish object beautiful. Head over to the BandCamp page for this recording to look at the other Beest releases in the right column. Go ahead and click on “more releases,” while you’re at it. I love the colors, the font choices, the layout template, and that Beest logo itself, a clever stylization of a chord fingering diagram. While I’m much more interested in music than visual design, these are seriously awesome, and a damned striking way to launch a label.
As it turns out, the fellow behind these eye-popping album covers is also half of The Dept. of Harmonic Integrity. You may already know “Wayne Longer” as “Adderall Canyonly” from Field Hymns, and along with “Min Roach,” the pair have delivered a marvelous debut.
This kind of recording is totally refreshing to me from a review perspective, because I like the music immediately while still having to do a lot of work to describe what I think is happening here. In the last few years, particularly coming from cassette labels like Field Hymns and Orange Milk, there is a new genre coalescing, a subset of electronic music that is heavy on synths and sprinkled with samples and field recordings. In terms of influence, these recordings seem to draw from musique concrete/early electronic music without taking themselves too seriously and disappearing into academia, while absorbing technical and emotionally evocative contents from a potpourri of under-respected musical forms: B-movie horror and sci-fi soundtracks, cartoons, early video game sound design, library music, cheesy Moog albums, 80s neon shapes and stripes and cracklepaint, Wal-Mart synths, early/naive iterations of consumer culture, etc. In other words, whatever one would call this genre (is there a name that I don’t know yet?), it unites highbrow and lowbrow forms of music with an ease that reminds me of what Juxtapoz magazine did in the ’90s for under-appreciated forms of visual art like hot rods and graffiti.
My first thought about this album’s cover is that it looks like the world’s most awesome “library album” jacket. And the music really manages to sustain that kind of vibe, sounding both exotic and vaguely familiar at once. It’s all synths, unfolding with a deliberate patience I associate with highbrow minimalism and timbres from early Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze and the like. Tempo choices are laid-back, and layers of synths rise and fall to build space. Smoother waveforms generally form slowly-evolving pads, and slightly more aggressive timbres are introduced when melodies need some differentiation. Some pieces like “Limbs +” focus on rhythmic and textural ideas, while others like “Upon the Starry Skies” have much more emphasis on harmonic content.
In addition to the more “classical” and early komische influences on this music, moments of sci-fi or horror soundtrack drama creep into the album at times: the last few minutes of “Upon the Starry Skies,” for example, has a tense organ bass melody and ethereal synth chords seems to indicate trouble in a spaceship in a dark forest, and “The Ouudan” could serve as an alternate soundtrack to “Chariots of the Gods” in my book. That’s my favorite track here, which is broken into two sections. The first third phases a metallic-sounding riff against itself within a rich bath of delay and reverb, and gradually fades out into a long metamorphosis of aviation-sounding drones finding their way back to ancient synths and sirens and feedback-like drones. It’s a real treat of spatial and dynamic effects.
But in general, this music is made from a very minimal collection of elements—the quality of the synth sounds themselves is such an important factor in digging this music, I suggest swinging over to that BandCamp page again. If you dig these synths, you’ll have a good time getting lost in this album. Here’s to hoping Beest gets a chance to release this stuff on vinyl, too, as this music and its artwork already seem like a treasured relic from the retrofuture.
—Scott Scholz
Boron - The Beige Album
Back when I first started writing for Killed in Cars, I heard a bit of the first Boron release on Field Hymns, “Decrresscenndo.” That album was a focused affair, loaded with squealing, throbbing, rumbling oscillations from a Moog iiip (press for the album calls that synth “the size of a room,” but isn’t that just a suitcase model?). With the addition of a few well-placed classical samples, the music concentrated on the extremes of Moogscapes, falling somewhere along the vibes of old tape-music from “serious” music circles but with a bit of 8-bit retrocool vibe mixed in.
On The Beige Album, Boron expands in many directions at once: vintage synth abuse remains at the nucleus of the project, but there are lots of synth tones from other eras at work in these pieces—I think I’m hearing a lot of Casio/Yamaha tones and percussion pads from the early 80s, if my memories of stretching my little arms to bang on the tiny blue drum pads of those old Yamaha department store machines serve me correctly. As before, samples get employed occasionally on this record, and field recordings seem to pop up, too: nocturnal outdoor/jungle sounds on “Moons Over My Panamax” and wind/fire sounds that occasionally dominate “Sunset Tunnel,” etc. Vocals and guitars have prominent roles in several pieces, as well. And guest musicians are featured on roughly half of the album, taking Boron’s sole member Dan Nelson in new directions.
There’s a bit of every extreme in electronica represented on Beige: if you want subdued textures and environmental sounds, a little ominous but left at a low, exploratory volume, you’ll dig the “Moons Over…” track mentioned above. For something louder and more aggressive, try “Borong” a few tracks later, which itself segues into a more docile exposition of similar textures in “The Boroner’s Report.” The first few tracks on the album feel like close cousins of the “Decrresscenndo” music, while there are some more melodic ideas heading in the direction of projects like Giant Claw in tunes like “Tomato Upload” and “G-Rated Grope” (though this stuff is weirder and less heavily-arranged than the ‘Claw).
A few of my favorites here take the basic Boron sound into new dimensions: the almost operatic female vocals of “Glamour Science,” coupled with its waspy bass drones, remind me of early Residents mixed with early Zappa vocal writing in the best of ways, but with a more modern, self-aware feeling. “Mountain Dewd” starts with a retro-cheeziod synth drum/bass groove, which gets molested by some seriously reverbed-out psych guitar overdubs: think Acid Mothers Temple robbing a GameStop. And “Boron Squad” is a seriously bizarre surprise in the middle of the album, a full “song” evoking the spirit of Snakefinger crashing at an Occupy camp with beats, guitars, and hilarious f-bombing vocals. Mic Check!
As the album stretches in so many directions, one subtle-but-cool technique for establishing continuity across the seas of Beige is simply to re-use bits of sound in contrasting pairs of songs. For example, “Nonsensebeard” and “Clamburgler” both use a “Yeah Boron” sample; “Moons Over…” and “Sunset Tunnel” use similar nocturnal/outdoor sounds, and “Viking Ballet” re-uses a strange popping passage from “PongSong,” which I think is made by smacking a microphone running into an envelope filter. It’s a great way to introduce a little cohesion to such a multifarious batch of music. Altogether, this is a strong record that succeeds at almost every deviant style it tries, and I’m going to go back and explore the sophomore Boron release “Aria Statica” to get some more Boron in my speakers.
—Scott Scholz
This is my latest 8tracks mix. There is a good deal of variety here, as it moves from weird electronics (juke to IDM) and on to field recordings, eai, drone, and concrete. Random folk and choral music is interspersed as well. Enjoy!
Moulttrigger - Birds
There are so many fun ways to approach this cassette release from Centipede Farm. On the surface, this is a bizarre foray into heavily processed “avian arrangements,” wild electronic escapades made from a multitude of bird calls sourced from the old National Geographic Guide to Bird Sounds. The track titles are, ahem, nested in puns, with gems like “Undoing the Pigeon” and “Die Fledergrouse,”and perhaps the most entertaining part of all is that the man behind Moulttrigger is named Dave Wren. For reals.
Despite the lighthearted track titles, the music of “Birds” isn’t afraid of the dark. Certainly by the middle of the album, the novelty element of this production is gone, and one is left to the industrial rhythmic structures of “Whole Lotta Dove,” or mechanical, train-like dirges with counterpoint that sounds like motors and squeaking doors in “I’m Just Lookin’ for Some Thrush.” The harsh granular quality to much of the album’s textures feels deadly serious and many dustbaths away from its feathered origins.
Not every track is what I’d call “grainy” in texture, though. One of my favorites, “Sitta,” converts birds into very clean, crisp electronic beats and then attacks them with various filters. By the end, the sounds become almost human, sounding like a voice yelling “nook” or “no,” with really unsettling stereo imagery supplementing the weirdness. That, and the perpetual chiptune-march of the album’s closer, “Tern, Tern, Tern” are my favorites.
When I consider the intended utility behind birdsong collections, I think of the many folks who go “birding” and attempt to imitate bird calls precisely, listening to the calls carefully to memorize every detail. In the case of “Birds,” one works instead with music, heavy on rhythmic delineation, where gentle imitation evokes musical genres instead. One might peer into the edge of a Jamaican jungle, for example, blasting “Poorwill Revolt,” whose triple meter feel sometimes subtly nudges at dub, geese honking on the “ands.” Tight samples serve to bring out vaguely conventional percussion sounds in “Undoing the Pigeon,” too, creating a sort of lounge/exotica-ish backbeat with an insistent envelope-filtered kick drum of sorts.
If I didn’t know ahead of time that this whole record was made from manipulations of bird sounds, I don’t think I would’ve guessed. Interestingly, though, there seems to be something inherent to these sounds that animals still detect, even when the samples are tiny and the effects applied to them are dramatic. In my own unscientific study, I discovered that one out of two pug dogs in my care remain at attention whenever I listen to “Birds,” looking toward my listening room as though a bird might come flying out at any time:
While not my “usual thing,” I really dig the album, and I think you might, too. As many cassette releases go, the first run of “Birds” has already
flown the coopcome and gone, but you’re in luck: it’s back in print as a 2nd edition. Go to Centipede Farm, and you’ll be rocking your Walkman for a measly four bucks. And a bit of trivia: subsequent to the release of this recording, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library (which has long housed the recordings used to make the National Geographic records used as samples in “Birds”) put its whole collection of animal sounds online. There are over 150,000 of them. See you in a few years, Mr. Wren!—Scott Scholz
There are a few different versions of this (one far inferior one on BeatPort that came up on Google), but this one is the best. Like the first track on the YYU release from last year, this particular track isn’t a straight juke track, but juke is its main character. What fits around it is nice, but the repetitions in this are addictive. Check it out.
“Fear May Be a Builder” is a seriously fine debut album from Brooklyn’s Killer BOB, an instrumental quartet whose compositions defy every pigeonhole. I’ve been digging into this music for the last few months, and though I dug this record after one spin, it continues to grow on me even more. Killer BOB is, at their essence, an avant-rock band, but they also draw heavily from minimalist classical structures and a funky, asymmetrical melodic approach from the early days of free jazz.
Though I listen to a lot of improvisation-oriented music, my heart really lies closest to heavily-composed forms of music, and Killer BOB’s thoughtful and meticulous writing fills the staves of my heart with all of the right notes. Fans of Zs, especially their earlier sextet period, will really dig this music—but that’s not to say it’s derivative. Though both acts incorporate forms of phrase repetition and an emphasis on cycles of insistent rhythmic activity, there is a certain old-school grit to Killer BOB that reminds me of 60s mavericks like Captain Beefheart and Ornette Coleman, leaving space for moments of reckless abandon and fun.
I caught Killer BOB drummer Max Jaffe on tour with Normal Love last fall, where he was covering intricate-yet-brutal parts tracked in the studio by Eli Litwin (Intensus, Inzinzac, etc). Jaffe’s ferocious and precise take on the “Survival Tricks” music led me to suspect that he was a very heavy-handed player, but his playing with Killer BOB shows his delicate side at times. Despite their name, much of Killer BOB’s record is downright gentle, such as the aptly-titled triptych “Music She Can Sleep Through,” and even pieces that crescendo into dense walls of sound tend to be made of many interlocking sections that include moments of ambient calm.
As a whole, this music breathes within a wide dynamic range, and almost any kind of musical contrast you can imagine is is fully and thoughtfully exploited: tempo shifts, stop/start sections, consonance and dissonance, pop/art genre references, repetition and through-composition. Structurally, the rhythm section frequently acts as musical anchor, creating steady (and relatively subdued) pulses over which guitar and saxophone work together as one pointillistic instrument, lurching between melodic fragments, quickly repeated phrases, and rhythmically dense clusters of shifting dissonance. But there are many exceptions to any generality a person can make about this album—every approach is subject to change as the music itself demands.
It’s difficult for me to pick favorite tracks on this record, as it really works best as a full record, but a few highlights are tracks like “Undercoat” and “Overcoat,”in which the gentle 4-measure figure of overdubbed reeds in the former morphs into a “tough exterior” with brash-yet-plaintive guitar work in the latter. I love the simple, dirty riff that gets explored throughout “Dirt Tits,” with an unusual solo drum workout of the riff for its final minute. And my overall favorite is “Sirens,” which is probably the most complex composition of the whole record, raging through a series of shifting approaches between a beautiful opening/closing made of gentle, harplike guitars.
Though this is essentially an instrumental album, there is a literary undercurrent to Killer BOB: four spoken word tracks, alternately collaged and dream-journal-like, are sprinkled roughly evenly into the track sequence of “Fear May Be a Builder,” presumably each representing one member of the band. And the layout of track titles on the back of the CD digipak is vertical, using a strange top/bottom justification that initially caused me to try to read the track titles horizontally: quite a Burroughsian cutup! I definitely get some Surrealist vibes from both these elements and the collage/montage approaches of this music, which are enforced by the band’s press info that describes this as a record “which explores their collective subconscious dream worlds.” As a huge enthusiast of Surrealist Games and other techniques for bringing subconscious and chance elements to the surface, I think this record succeeds as both a map of the dream/waking hinterlands and a fascinating bit of the territory itself. Highly recommended.
Perhaps more of the extramusical elements of this band’s work will become even clearer on tour, both in live performance and through exploring a tour-only tape and a chapbook of writing/imagery made by the band. And the band is on tour right now, heading into the midwest and back to the east coast. For Lincoln folks, they’ll be visiting us on Feb 18th at the Bourbon (save a tape and a book for me, guys), with King Thumper and Multidimensional Cowboy. For folks living elsewhere, this Facebook page has their full tour itinerary. And if you miss them on tour, you can (and should) get their album from Primary Records.
—Scott ScholzI will be playing some tracks on the radio tomorrow night, Sunday the 27th at 10PM Central (11PM Eastern). The tracks will be mostly stuff I haven’t posted or mixed before. As always, I expect a nice chat with Scott, the host of the show (Other Music), and frequent KiC contributor (see his blog here, too). Click here to go to the main page, and then click the streaming button on the right side player to hear the stream.
(via on Tumblr)
(source)Boris | Sometimes (My Bloody Valentine cover)
from an all-Japanese Loveless tribute album, released today. here’s another track from it.
- You said you missed some of how Pitchfork used to be around the time you started the blog, even though you reacted against it. How has aboveground/underground online/offline music journalism changed the most in the last five or so years?
I think I’ve always headed in the opposite direction as Pitchfork, for instance, although this is probably mostly by chance. As I said, I initially was turned off by the self-referential feel of the site. It felt celebratory in its subjectivity, its apparent agenda, and everything else. While I now approximate this style through acceptance of my subjective nature, I still didn’t like how the reviews were more about the reviewer than anything. They also seemed to be more about the career arc of artists than about the record in question of the body of work of that artist, ie. it was about how much, or how little, the artist in question adhered to some notion of “what artists should do.”
However, I would trade for that in an instant compared to what is now, more or less, promo materials for tie-ins with sponsorships. I think it is safer now. Imagine older Pitchfork, to go back to them: they’d champion weirdo stuff like Philip Jeck, William Basinski, and the Fiery Furnaces. Now, that’s not the bleeding edge there, but it isn’t the easy listening that takes up a bulk of their work (although they’ve developed some niche colums, with the dubstep one being strong, when it ran, and the Out Door being good, too).
I Suppose this isn’t a concise answer, but I feel as if people are moving away from analysis of records, because there are too many and conveying this sense of “I know all music that exists, and this is where it situates within the entirety of recorded music” is on its face foolish at this point. I’m about 7-8,000 records into things, and I realize every day how little I know. It is impossible to do this, so I feel things online, anyway, are moving to simple, subjective communication of what people like without this idea that “I need to write a long piece that (falsely) gives the impression I have an area of music cornered” or even talking about the music. My Twitter is moving in this way. More sites simply offer streams, as does Pitchfork Advance, which I think is gorgeous and a great idea.
There are a few people I interact with on here and on RYM that know about as much music as me, but it is totally different music. In that respect, I think covering music is more fragmented. It isn’t a conversation between different people about the same records (as, perhaps, it was in the past), but rather a collection of people talking about music itself, more conceptually, with their own collection of 5-10,000 albums on a HD as their “experience.” - I'm not really a music blog (duuuh), but I came across Killed In Cars on RYM, and there's some tremendous stuff on your tumblr and your old blog, and I wanted to thank you for that. I really liked Black Chastity - Predator's Breath off the RYM list, certainly one of the best Noise albums I've heard in a while. Do you like any Microtonal music?
No problem. Some of those posts are coming up on five years old, although I’m moving them here so as to consolidate services a bit.
I do like microtonal music, but as you can see here, very little of what I’ve rated is tagged as that. The reason for this is microtonal music is often simply tagged as free improvisation or eai on RYM, and some of my fellow travelers on that site genre vote in packs, so I can’t override them. Since you’ve been on my page, I’m sure you’ve seen this list (with microtonal starting around 117, although not updated in a few months). You likely will find a lot more stuff up your alley there. - Who is behind killedincars? For an online persona of a high publicity you manage to stay more or less anonymous. Is there any kind of history behind the blog?
Some of this is loosely addressed in this tag (here).
Other than that, I would say that I value my anonymity, at least as far as I’ve maintained it. For instance, most people that have followed the site for a while should know that I’m an attorney, at least in education and nominally by trade, based on this post. I also have never hid where I’ve lived, although when I was living in Brooklyn that came through much more obviously (since I could go see shows all the time). The Blogspot era (this, for example) of the site is more in that direction, while atmosphere in the Midwest informs my more “recent” posts (for example, this and this).
I would also say that the site grew from a small group of people, so it was more a group than my personality. As such, I keep to myself and interact on the back-end of these things (like Tumblr or Facebook or RYM). Sometimes that changes, and people like Matt and Scott kept this site alive for a long time. However, that’s the exception that proved the rule. There are a few people I’d like to get working on the site, but everyone seems to be talented and busy.
Another thing about the site is that it started as a collaboration with another person, so I never have thought of it as “me,” if you understand. Around 2008, when it started, I also had a strong aversion to the overly subjective and self-referential nature of sites like Pitchfork (although I miss that for them now), so I tried to keep it simple on my personal life and simply explain how a record made me feel. It has only been fairly recently that I’m more comfortable including more detail from my life to better explain my opinion of a record. I have enabled the ask feature on KiC. I suppose with the new format, the bottom left icon isn’t obvious. As such, I’m setting this image as a click-through. I’ll answer most anything here.
The two previous Miles Trees I’ve posted are the 1975 Tree and the Fillmore Tree. Below is the third tree, the Lost Quintet Tree. Each disc has been re-ripped at 320 KBPS and upped as two high speed archives (the first for discs 1-6, the second for discs 7-12).
With the recent rejuvenation of the old trees posts, I figured it was time to add to the pile. Sony has, with varying quality, started to supply listeners with more commercial options for Miles’ electric period. The last decade has seen a DVD release of Miles’ transitional band playing the Isle of Wight, on 8/29/70 (which fits in between the March/April Fillmore East shows covered by the Fillmore Tree, and the mid-October shows in that same set). This same show is also available on CD now, on the 2011 release Bitches Brew Live. It is oddly paired with a pure Lost Quintet show from 7/5/69, perhaps to juxtapose the two bands playing the same material.
This July 5 show immediately precedes a July 7 show from Central Park, which is featured in this tree. You can see Sony start to move outward from the Bitches Brew material that they’ve released ever since The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions. In fact, this tree doesn’t include two more shows that are being commercially released (although they’ve been common in the bootleg circuit): two sets from 7/25/69 in France (which slot nicely ahead of the October material in this tree), and one show that is included here, an 11/5/69 show in Stockholm. And, while it has made the rounds, the new Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 does throw in a bonus: just as Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edtion thew in a DVD of the 11/4/69 show (included below), the tree’s hole between the November 5th and the 9th shows is filled by a DVD release of a show from November 7th, in Berlin.
For the completists out there, then, the below set still occupies a crucial spot between the official releases. While Sony continues to sell us things we’ve paid for in taxes (state broadcasts and what not), they haven’t yet created the day-by-day log of Miles’ shows, perhaps because only bootlegs exist (in varying quality), or perhaps because they’ve chosen what they think is best. That subjective approach yielded the very strong It’s About That Time, which was this quintet (adding the, to my ears, superfluous Airto) on 3/7/70 (a day after two sets at the Fillmore East, both of which are covered in the Fillmore Tree). It has also caused Sony to release questionable edits of Fillmore shows on older electric-era discs, among other things.
So, while you know where these shows fit in, and you can understand why fans pulled these in particular, what to make of the music? The 1975 Tree is the distant future from this point, but the Fillmore Tree is quite close in time. What’s the point? Well, the Lost Quintet of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette is mythical for a reason. Where the Fillmore Tree, and the commercial releases from the same period, show Miles adding to his working group, subtracting others, and moving away from rock-influenced jazz into (slightly) jazz-influenced rock, this set is one that is less a group and sound in flux as it is a group and sound rapidly blooming (and then, sadly, dissipating).
This was the last “conventional” jazz lineup that Miles would regularly tour with. Each member had some involvement in either In A Silent Way or Bitches Brew (or both). That experience allowed this particular group to quickly move from the staples of Miles’ Second Great Quintet (saved for another day) set-list to shows/improvisations based on Bitches Brew. While it lasted, this concentrated the large-group sound of Bitches Brew into a primarily acoustic quintet show. Besides surely being appealing to purists on that count alone, the results were musically stunning. While Miles had clung to radical, abstract version of modality as much of the jazz world went full on free, this music, with these players, skipped free jazz as genre convention, and hit on sounds and developments that bear striking similarity to contemporary free improvisation. Since we have almost all of the concerts and all of the studio tape at this point, it is clear that the Lost Quintet, while showing development of its own, still made some unexpected evolutionary leap past “simple” free jazz into bizarre terrain.
So, while there are commercial releases that get around the edges of this tree, and we have a nice wealth of material from the studio sessions, the In A Silent Way sessions, and from 1970 (with sporadic playing before another leap around 1972), this was the middle point in terms of working group and studio output for Miles. It also, likely, will be your favorite music of his. Period. As such, I’ve lovingly guarded these discs in a safe place and have brought them out to compress them at 320 KBPS. I’ve diligently tagged these MP3’s according to the tree information, and I’ve added my own artwork (scavenged from the internet, edited, and posted in this photo set). I’ve split the archive in two, with six sets each. The intended organization is to download each and put them into a single folder with all the art and the folder graphic intact.
This can’t stay up forever, so get it now!Disc 1 (3/XX/69, Duffy’s Tavern, Rochester [First Set])
Disc 2 (3/XX/69, Duffy’s Tavern, Rochester [Second Set])
Disc 3 (7/7/69, Central Park, New York)
Disc 4 (10/27/69, Teatro Sistina, Rome [First Set])
Disc 5 (10/27/69, Teatro Sistina, Rome [Second Set])
Disc 6 (11/2/69, Ronnie Scott’s Club, London)
Disc 7 (11/3/69, Salle Pleyel, Paris [First Set])
Disc 8 (11/3/69, Salle Pleyel, Paris [Second Set])
Disc 9 (11/4/69, Tivoli Konsertsal, Copenhagen)
Disc 10 (11/5/69, Folkets Hus, Stockholm [First Set])
Disc 11 (11/5/69, Folkets Hus, Stockholm [Second Set])
Disc 12 (11/9/69, De Doelen, Rotterdam)
All links and artwork updated 1/10/13.
DISCS 1-6 ARCHIVE HERE (523 MB)
DISCS 7-12 ARCHIVE HERE (708 MB)
- There are a few different versions of this (one far inferior one on BeatPort that came up on Google), but this one is the best. Like the first track on the YYU release from last year, this particular track isn’t a straight juke track, but juke is its main character. What fits around it is nice, but the repetitions in this are addictive. Check it out.
(No streaming audio available)207 plays - Here is the best track off of G.H.’s Ground, a 2011 EP of bass-heavy techno/dub-techno. This particular track reminds me of a Tommy Four Seven track I posted last year, although this one gets to the pleasure-inducing vocal fuckery much quicker, and with more aggression. This entire EP is heavy on the bass, so you’re missing a lot without the requisite thud in the mix. Enjoy!
(No streaming audio available)1444 plays - Prompted by a thread on Facebook, I uploaded and posted this number. Autolux was a band I had high hopes for seeing as Greg Edwards was a member. Edwards was a member of Failure, a band I was obsessed with as a late teen. Following that band’s disintegration, I followed the respective members’ projects until this one popped up. I initially had a demo (or so it was called on SLSK), and this specific song was on there. It was then announced that Future Perfect would also be the name of the upcoming official album. I was shocked that ‘Future Perfect’ didn’t make it on to Future Perfect. Sadly, this remains my favorite Autolux song by far. Such a glorious downer… focus on the piano.
(No streaming audio available)1668 plays - William Bowers’ Post Modern came in my mailbox, unsolicited. As such, having never heard of Mr. Bowers or the tiny label (Haute Magie) that sent this album as its first offering, it sat in my queue for a while. Having recently been gripped by a new enthusiasm for music, I’ve been working through mailings, and I was glad that I took the time to sit and listen to this CD. Post Modern starts conservative, with a few short tracks of varying electronic genres offered up, and that’s a shame, because the quality is back-loaded. Starting with this track, “Atlas,” Bowers really steps up his game with haunting, minimal melodic fragments looped and scratched up. This track isn’t representative of the whole CD, but if you like it I encourage you to check out the bandcamp link. As always, this was posted to the KiC FB page first.
(No streaming audio available)1539 plays - I’ve been obsessed with this track the last few days, as it has dominated my stereo and completely supplanted the Big Sean (I know…) track that had been bouncing in my head. Tommy Four Seven, on Primate, trades in what he calls hard club techno. I don’t know what clubs he’s talking about, because this is some out there shit as far as I can tell. This particular track is the best on the record, one that features an industrial feel, scraping textures that surge into prominence only to give way to manipulated, polyrhythmic vocal manipulations. Once you get to the 6 minute mark, you better believe this is a fucked up track.
(No streaming audio available)1464 plays - Yet another ▼▲▼vagina vangi track. I think each of the EPs I’ve heard are quite the mixed bags, but they have their moments. I liked this track, and now off of Locked Forever comes this ultra cheesy track with just about the greatest about face you can manage. About two minutes in the track has a surge and then an arpeggiated bassline move up the center and the track is off. Excellent beat, too. These guys (or guy) manage to create some choice Miami Vice witch house.
(No streaming audio available)2695 plays - Talk about totally overlooked. I had given this a low rating, and then hadn’t listened to it for a couple years. At one point I had it as noise, another as eai, and so when I went to work revising my eai list, I checked this out in iTunes. I’ve had to bump up the rating and switch this around completely. Twistycat is one where I don’t know the individuals, but this is a strange blend of lo-fi recording, free improvisation, drone, ambient, and if that doesn’t sound right, it actually is excellent. This is horns, but the density and the interaction of the wave forms leads to odd drone textures and oscillations from the dissonance. What is left is a very compelling, moving mass of sound that discards the methods that brought it about.
(No streaming audio available)1220 plays - I’ve gotten a few questions about what got me into drone. I think it is totally random for most people, but for me one of the key tracks was this massive piece by Birchville Cat Motel, ‘Buckling Metal Snowflakes’ off of Chi Vampires. I think I snagged this because of cover art on last.fm way back when it came out. Regardless, this is worth the entire play length.
(No streaming audio available)1200 plays - I was going through some of my albums that I haven’t listened to, and for some reason I hadn’t given a star rating to NNCK’s 2004 pair of live albums, Dutch Money and First Kingdom of the Ghost. Both are excellent, but while I gave the higher rating to Dutch Money initially, upon a few more listens I’ve become completely fascinated with First Kingdom. In fact, I was set to post the last couple tracks off of it, but then went through the first track again and was blown away. NNCK continues to be one of my absolute favorites, and if you want an “accessible” listen to their sound, here it is.
(No streaming audio available)1141 plays - Here is an old Deathprod track (although, if I’m not mistaken, it might have been appended to the album as a bonus track - not sure) from 1994’s Treetop Drive 1-3, Towboat, the last track to be specific. This one starts like a typical drone track, although of high quality, but around the 15-minute mark it gets quite intense with cuts in and out that I really like. If you have patience for this, you’ll be greatly rewarded over the last 5 minutes. This went perfect with my nap today, actually.
(No streaming audio available)1237 plays - Here is one of my favorites from Okkyung Lee’s 2011 album Noisy Love Songs, on Tzadik. There is a good deal of variety on the record, though if you’re familiar with Lee’s music you won’t be too shocked by what you find. The album has modern classical elements, while much of the attendant playing feels free. There is also a distinct avant-folk/traditional folk feeling to some of the instrumentals. I feel this track encapsulates a lot of the flavors over the whole record, hence the choice.
(No streaming audio available)1551 plays - I promise you I listen to other bands. Really. Anyway, this came up on the old iTunes, and the end rocks fairly hard. Zelienople’s His/Hers was the gateway to their music, and maybe this track will be that for you, too.
(No streaming audio available)2163 plays
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Posts
- Dec 28, 12
We've long moved on to another location. However, this site has gotten out of control, so I've cleaned it up a bit. A few upload requests have been honored for the last time, the design has been tweaked, and spam has been cut down (drastically).
Below are the links to the active iterations of KILLED in CARS. Please visit those!
KILLED in CARS (main site)
Facebook
Tumblr (current iteration of blog)
Twitter (for downloads)
RYM (for album ratings)
8tracks (mixes)
Mixlr (DJ broadcasts)
SoundCloud
Last.fm
YouTube
Vimeo
This Is My Jam - May 26, 10----------ArtistDiscogsGiven the impressive size of his back catalogue (measured both in depth and breadth), it is easy to approach a new Evan Parker album with trepidation. This reaction is understandable; it seems almost natural to expect that after decades of output, an artist or band must begin churning out steaming turds -- with age it all comes undone, or something like that. So then Mr. Parker's forty-odd (fifty?) year tenure should make him an octogenarian, or at least someone who you would not like to see behind an automobile. Yet Whitstable Solo, along with Evan Parker's other recent releases -- like Relevance, out this year with Dave Liebman and Tony Bianco, on Red Toucan --, stand up alongside the classics in this free jazz elder statesman's discography.Psi records (see comments section for historical details) has made a name for itself (partly) by reissuing old and out of print free improv records, many on which Parker played. Whitstable Solo, on the other hand, is a collection of eight songs performed in 2008 at Whistable, UK -- seven of which were live and in front of an audience, while the remaining track was squeaked out before the crowd had arrived.The jams start in typical Parker fashion, with a cyclic squall of soprano sax nonsense lasting nearly twenty minutes. This is definitive Parker, pioneered way back on Saxophone Solos, and now, to my ears, one of the most easily recognizable styles in jazz. The haze brought on by Parker's relentless upper register recedes in the midsections of this album, revealing a tender and uncharacteristically gossamer sound. The sixth solo is, dare I say, almost melodic! But purist shouldn't fret, for Evan Parker's shrill saxophone reemerges in the final two tracks, obliterating any lingering sense that this gent is softening.Each passage may have antecedent within Parker's own catalogue. In the solo setting, it may be too much to expect truly unique and new material; however, in collaboration, Evan is still redefining the boundaries of his instrument (see 2009's C-Section, with John Wiese). Even so, this album is a delight; I would love as many "derivative" solo albums from Evan Parker as possible.
- May 24, 10----------ArtistDiscogsHere's another from docperkins (and I strongly recommend it):Some people believe that a photograph captures the soul and fend-off a camera as if the essence of their being is about to be abducted at the imminence of a click. Ablinger atonal works operate along the same capturing principle, extracting the music of celebrities’ speeches, concomitantly to the celebrities uttering that speech. The phantasmatic Other of the utterance acquire shape, inasmuch as the meaning that fulfilled the utterance is discarded on behalf of a structure that dispenses with inner meaning, given that it is a derived musical form. And then some.In 1968 Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes pronounced the author dead. The two Latino poststructuralist thinkers demonstrated that it was about time to stop considering authors as almighty producer of meanings and unique sources of signification. Along these lines authors should not bear the ultimate interpretations of works of art in general, not even of their own artistic productions. The death of the author proclaimed by Foucault and Barthes became a cornerstone for a radical understanding of modern aesthetical production and consumption of art.I could see this radical des-authorisation coming in music. If one takes a close glimpse into the recent history of serialisms, one can perceive that the trend had been pulsating in-between the lines and as palimpsests in outrageously insightful works, e.g., Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio and Salvatore Sciarrino, these illustrious offspring of Anton Webern. However, no one had stared in the eyes of the issue as Ablinger is hereby doing.The matter was not to aestheticise the death of the author in the best ‘middle-class tradition’ of celebrating losses with phoney messes, but rather to take the death of the author as a template for aesthetic practice and criticism. The word of order would be, therefore, to extract music from the supply of meanings that in modernity had been monopolised by the Author through spoken and written narratives. The point is that there is music in that monopoly; words in sequence can only come to being meaningfully in music. So, how this music would sound like if played side by side with the narrative, seemed to be an exciting working programme, which Ablinger takes up while killing the author, akin to Foucault agenda. The latter is radical: by killing the author playing music without a composer it displays, by the same token, the ontological limits of improvisation in music.Come to think of it, how can music derived from spoken discourses be considered improvised if its structure is given by the author’s eagerness to make sense (to ‘make meaning’)? Furthermore, how can music derived from eagerness to make sense not be improvised, given that the authors of those discourses had no intentions to make music while talking sense? Improvisation in music, proves Ablinger, is the worshiping of an unsung god, or counting on help from an unknown, invisible hero. There will always be a hidden structure somewhere in the unconscious making sure that that which was deemed improvised is pure symptom. And what is a symptom but a field- marshal of desire, and what is desire but the ontological grammar of a subjectivity, and what is a discourse but an attempt to rationalise that symptom, and what is Ablinger’s aesthetics but the sound of the symptom?Ablinger says that “actually the piano part is the analysis of the voice. Music analyses reality”. I beg to differ, and will hereby engage the same principle he, unbeknownst to himself, used, which is the one of the death of the author. Ablinger shall not have the ultimate interpretation claim over his achievement. He appears to be perfectly aware of what he did, but not at all of what he did does. The music is not analysing reality. The music at stake is the Real or, in other words, the unconscious non-symbolised counterpart of the reality of the discourses. Therefore, music could not analyse reality. What it does instead is to promise that without music ideas can neither be produced nor conveyed in spoken form. Consequently, the fear of this kind of music is the fear of making sense, and to stop making sense is the inability to perceive music.Foucault asserts that once the death of the author is properly carried out “all discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the anonymity of murmur”. Ablinger brings up this funeral murmur to irreverent, mesmerising music. Let us rejoice, finally a modern requiem was composed to mourn the death of the Author and celebrate the re-birth of meaning. The requiem, alas, is atonal.
- May 21, 10----------
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Rdeča Raketa is a Vienna-based duo comprised of Maja Osojnik and Matija Scdellander, whose 2010 collaborative cassette, “Old Girl, Old Boy,” combines their admirable and respective training in electronic and improvised music composition. “Old Girl, Old Boy” is a contextual and exploratory digital/acoustic collage that demands: 1) literally putting yourself on the electronic device table to comprehend (or not) the complex fusion of these often abrasive, wacky, yet tremendously skillful sounds; and 2) freeing yourself to be a part of whatever adventure on which the entire 37-minute track might take you. In other words, like the composed improvisation itself, the listening experience simultaneously demands intensive focus as much as it does an ability to go with it, wherever the heck that might be.
The first half or so of this cassette appears to be a cry for help, but I don’t mean this in the sense that anyone or anything needs help. The abstract sounds created by the sub-bass recorder, e-bass, and a mish-mash of indistinguishable electronic trinkets appear to emerge from a deserted electro-acoustic island of sorts. The clicks, bumps, loops, drones, human voices, and bass tones, all underscored for the first ten minutes by a constant state of electronic panic, never seem to reach any grounding or final destination. The first half, in sum, is an uncertain and sparse call composed of choppy SOS signals (sometimes human, sometimes not, but always nature-culture). The first part of the latter half (“half” here is defined simply by time; the piece itself has no obvious starts or stops, never mind halves, quarters, etc.), however, sees these sounds reaching the mainland for the first time, a dark, somewhat hopeful, ambient land/soundscape where the panic subsides, even if temporarily, before a sense of uncertainty takes over again around the 25-minute mark, or around the time when a human joins us again for a few seconds, only to disappear rather unsettlingly.
“Old Girl, Old Boy” is brilliantly disconcerting, and, admittedly, will take a few more listens before I really get what might be going on. Spending more time with this album may or may not be a good thing, though, because those big jungle birds sound really fucking creepy.
Christopher Canning - May 18, 10----------
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RYMA Moraine is a geological phenomena; the accumulation of unconsolidated debris, soil and rocks compacted under glacial drifts. Over time these assemblages of loose matter form topographic features gradually exposed to the surface world by retreating glaciers.
Govrins' work evokes this process. Particles of sound are held in a state of suspension, encapsulated by frosty ambiance. Gradual drifts transform his soundscape, tracing subtle patterns of force and revealing contours over time. The naming of the tracks illustrates the variety of forces found in the formation of Moraine, thus mapping distinct processes of geological change; Ground, Push, Lateral, Terminal, Medial, Recessional.
Drawing on a sonic palette of processed cello and violin alongside digital sound synthesis, Govrin has created a work that feels compacted, cold and timeless. Through listening we participate in the process of glacial compression; to be buried deep beneath moving mountains of ice. There are moments that are stark, crystalline and beautiful as in Ground, where cello and violin weave elegiac tones through waves of distortion, and Medial which presents a world of crackling drones punctuated by ghostly and transitory string harmonics.
Comparisons can be drawn with Hildur Gudnadottir's Without Sinking, which is built around a similarly frosty, bleak and expansive use of cello and signal processing. At times reminiscent of the electro-acoustic music of Iannis Xenakis, Govrin engages in a comparable attempt to map features of the natural world through composed sound. Well produced and based on an engaging premise, this is a novel work that succeeds in subsuming our imaginations in geological phenomena.
Fíacha O' Dúbhda - Apr 26, 10----------
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RYMIf the universe operated in accordance with my own personal whims and motives, then KiC would phase out this whole avant-classical thing it's gotten itself entrenched in and start posting really great jazz records again. I'm going to try to get the ball rolling with what in my eyes is at least a very good one. First Impressions made - at the risk of sounding like a complete ass - a truly great first impression. Shamek Farrah makes a kind of modal jazz, occassionally slipping into free territory, that at first glance reminded me a bit of the great Astigmatic. That comparison only really applies to the first and last tracks here however, as what falls in between is a bit more funky and soulful. The album starts off with something that may end up being added to my list of favorite jazz tunes ever, "Meteorologicly Inclined." If Madlib ever gets ahold of the track immediately following it, "Watch What Happens Now," some serious shit is gonna go down. The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to "Meteorologicly Inclined," but it is still a very solid listen. Hell, that opinion may even change fairly soon, as this record has been continuously growing on me since I first listened to it earlier in the week. First impressions are often correct, but time can make the heart grow fonder - or something like that... whatever. - Apr 18, 10----------
Things fade in and out a lot on Jesse Somfay's A Catch in the Voice.
The Canadian producer's latest album is split across two discs, with the first containing ambient compositions and the second being more minimal techno-based. The title of one of the first disc's highlights, "Hypnogogii", stands as a pretty good representative of the territory we're in: the term appears to signify people occupying the "borderland state" between sleep and wakefulness, and by extension the surreal, quasi-hallucinatory imagery generated by the hypnagogic mind, a realm of rushing, humming sound and hyperreal patterns of colour and light (also reported by meditators, prisoners who spend extended periods in the dark, and partakers in hallucinogenic drugs). The music embodies its name: as gorgeous extended synth pads cocoon the edges, sporadic percussion lines weaves in and out of the middle, guiding the track, building to a head and then receding, morphing slowly as they go.
Indeed, much of the imagery here seems concerned with light and space, both inner and outer. A quick browse of the titles reveals the likes of "Good Morning Strange Light", "Folding Ghosts Into Origami Stars", "Borrealis", "Ex Astris, Ad Astra". "Amo Alucinor", from the second disc, translates roughly from Latin as "I love to daydream", the latter word being the root of the English "hallucinate". "Averroes" may well be a tribute to the 12th-century Muslim celestial philosopher of the same name. It's hard to say whether Somfay names these tracks after what the music suggests or conversely uses the titles as templates for the musical ideas, but either way, the two keep pace with one another as a coherent, otherworldly whole.
Some of the shorter tracks benefit from the added focus of constraint. "Folding Ghosts into Origami Stars", for example, layers subtle, buzzing, almost MBV-esque backdrops behind a pretty lead melody and comes off like the kind of atmospheric mini-epic Stars of the Lid do so well. "Brave Late Fade"'s bassy drone is occasionally joined by a choir seemingly heard from a distant dream. Some parts, like the start of "Cuckoo Spit", resemble the murky, primal noises you hear on the kind of medical albums doctors buy to learn the sounds of irregular heartbeats, or the woozy pulsing of an ultrasound scan. And "Irradian Irradiant"'s varispeed arpeggios occasionally even conjure up the unpleasant spectre of Rick Wakeman (not often, though, thankfully).
For my money, the ambient side is the better one, although in practice the two are not often fully separated (see: the beats on the first disc's "Good Morning Strange Light" or "Ex Astris, Ad Astra", the lush drumless flotation tank that is disc 2's "Averroes", or BoC-esque close "NotR"). "Scotia", all looming bassline and fractures of distant melody, and the almost trancey skitter of "Algonquin", are highlights of the second disc.
At nearly two hours total – five of the tracks exceed ten minutes, another three top nine minutes – A Catch in the Voice can perhaps be a little overwhelming to digest in one session. It's not intended as an insult to suggest that your concentration may sometimes also drift in and out of focus: for these field recordings from a land between sleep and wakefulness, there's nothing more appropriate. - Apr 14, 10----------
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RYMContinuing with our series of "What's So Great About Modernity?" is this wonderful collection of Vinko Globokar compositions. Those who are familiar with Globokar likely are thinking, "wait a minute here;" I ask these readers to indeed wait as I provide a snippet of Vinko's background. Mr. Globokar is both an accomplished trombonist, premiering works by many 20th century heavyweights, and a card carrying modernist -- working both with Stockhausen and at IRCAM in the 60's and 70's. But in addition to these composer credentials, Vinko founded the free improv group New Phonic Art (see comments section). Thus leading to the inclusion of Hallo, Do You Hear Me? in this "series." Herein Vinko synthesizes high modernity with aleatoric techniques, interspersing the composed with the improvised. These third-stream compositions are beyond modernity -- in that, unlike post-modernism, they are a progression past, not a counterpoint to, post-WWII composition. Maybe some would say post-post-modernism, but I reserve that word for mudslinging.Comparisons? This compilation could easily have been released by Ambiances Magnétiques and/or have been of Paul Dolden's doing. Yet never does Globokar come off as academic as the aforementioned label, which, considering Globokar's academy roots, only adds to the utter surreality of this affair. - Apr 04, 10----------When an ensemble dedicates itself to performing and recording the music of other composers it’s often tricky to balance the intentions of the composer with the musical identities of the performers. One hopes that they will realize the composer’s intentions to the fullest of their abilities but at the same time inject the music with new ideas or energy. That is to say, in an ideal performance the identities of the composer and performers are given the proper balance. This is essentially the definition of “interpretation” in notated Western music. A performance of a famous piece of music is always in danger of repeating the past or straying too far from the composer’s intentions, especially when playing music with any level of indeterminacy.
I first encountered the Arditti String Quartet’s massive discography of 20th century music as a teenager in music school and was instantly enamored. The Arditti Quartet are clearly one of the most skilled and important interpreters of modern chamber music but at a certain point the uniformity of their approach begins to overtake the music. Their virtuosity, commitment, and approach to most music is impeccable; however, when playing more subtle and restrained music like that of Feldman or Luigi Nono, their razor sharp accuracy and intensity can make the music seem “too Arditti”. Knowing this, I approached the first two installments of Zeitkratzer’s “Old School” recording series - each album is dedicated to a different famous composer of the late 20th century - with an exciting but also somewhat guarded interest.
Given that Zeitkratzer’s output over the past few years prominently features chamber ensemble re-workings of electronic and non-academic/non-Western music, it seems obvious that their new Old School series (dedicated to the most well-documented composers of the post-WWII avant-garde) is an attempt to breathe new life into music where the performance practice is already seemingly codified. Skilled, imaginative and vital interpreters that they are, suffice to say that Zeitkratzer is successful in this goal but the results can be a mixed bag.
The Cage disc includes three pieces from Cage’s final creative period, most commonly referred to as “the number pieces”. I have always loved the number pieces. With his final work Cage finally struck the perfect balance between indeterminacy and control, truly achieving his stated goal of both imitating nature and “letting the sounds be themselves”. That said, Zeitkratzer’s performances of “Four6” and “Five” sound a bit too much like Zeitkratzer for my taste. Allowing very little space for silence, these recordings showcase Zeitkratzer’s now familiar arresting intensity that achieves greatness in most situations but in the context of John Cage’s gentle, tender approach to sound seems forced into the Zeitkratzer ideology. The recording of “Hymnkus”, on the other hand, is astonishing; a surprisingly complex piece composed just a few years before Cage’s death, the piece proceeds intently but not too forcefully.
Perhaps because James Tenney’s music is not reliant on indeterminacy, the Tenney Old School disc fares much better. While still a well-known and respected composer, James Tenney’s exploration of several kinds of experimental music, and most notably his work with alternate tunings, has yet to receive the kind of affection and documentation that seems to benefit Cage and other well-known composers of the era. This disc is a welcome addition to the somewhat more limited availability of recordings of Tenney’s music, including one premiere recording (the stunning “Harmonium #2” from 1976) and new interpretations of two more well-known pieces. The disc concludes with one of Tenney’s most well-known pieces, the aptly titled arch piece, “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” which is finally given a definitive, masterful recording by percussionist Maurice de Martin. While the instrumentation of this single-note piece is left to the performer, the piece is most commonly performed on a large tam-tam because of the tam-tam’s endlessly rich timbre and breathtaking dynamic range (much credit is due here to the recording engineer - only on Michael Pisaro’s Hearing Metal has a tam-tam ever sounded so good). It’s a stunning, controlled performance that transcends both performer and instrument, and is the perfect end to what is the finest document of Tenney’s music I’ve heard on a single CD. - Mar 29, 10----------
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RYM1) I'm just going to get this out of the way: You are not able to download this album here. Erstwhile is a distributor, and they don't take kindly to our types robbing them of a fistful of dollars (dollars they actually deserve, as opposed to say EMI). Also, this record came out just last year. Go buy it. It's worth it.
2) This post is my response to Taylor's Tatsuya Nakatani post, located just south of here. Like Green Report 12, Let's Fall in Love! is a solo percussion record. I hear one big difference between this and Green Report and that is this: Let's Fall in Love! is actually a good record. Whereas Nakatani is content to wander from instrument to instrument and noodle a bit at each one, Carlsson creates gorgeous (and occasionally frightening) textures out of a handful at a time, slowly developing a piece to feel like a well-rounded composition rather than an off-the-cuff improvisation (this record is improvised, mind you). "My Heart was Screaming Like a Cow" is one of my favorite solo percussion tracks ever, mostly for what appears to be the use of a snare drum to generate a sympathetic buzz juxtaposed to a bowed god-knows-what, creating the illusion of a distorted signal. That kind of trickery is something I truly swoon over, and it is my hope that some of you may find yourselves swooning over Let's Fall in Love! as well. - Mar 28, 10----------
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RYMI was going to ask the readers to skip what follows and download Green Report 12 immediately, since I think it can be most effective without any prior knowledge of Nakatani. However, this premise will not work for two reasons: (i) an album in which Nakatani collaborated on was posted back in November (with Michel Doneda and Jack Wright) and (ii) plastered right on the cover is "solo percussion." So then I must presume some familiarity on the part of our readers with Nakatani, if only due to the connotations of a solo percussive album.Before I proceed, I must mention that Tatsuya is currently on tour in the US and will be doing so for the next few months. I highly suggest everyone check him out if he's coming into your town. Through the artist link above you can find his complete schedule. If you happen to take a gander at his schedule, you will notice that there are some gaps in it, both in terms of where and with whom he will be playing. If you happen to reside in one of these areas and would like to see him and/or play with him, it is worth your time to contact Nakatani. When he came through where I live I was only able to stick around for his solo set, so I cannot speak of his improvisational interaction with others; however, what I saw was "rad as fuck."That aside, some description of what Tatsuya actually does. In his set and, from what I can tell, on this album Nakatani employs a multitude of peculiar extended techniques -- scrapping "prepared" drums with cymbals, abusing singing bowls, and most prominently, bowing gongs -- all together producing sounds you would believe were not percussive unless you were told otherwise. Although all of his set was flabbergasting, the gong work was the truly mind mending tool in his repertoire. The technique works as such: Nakatani bows against the side of various large gongs, primarily toward the top (for better control, as far as I can tell), alternating both the speed and duration of his stroke in order to generate massive overtones, somewhat reminiscent of Robert Rutman's Steel Ensemble. Then, once one gong's reverberations blanket the room, he juxtaposes its sound with another's, whose tones are just enough dissimilar from the first's so that all the right kinds of dissonances challenge your ears. Time suspends and you begin to no longer just hear sound, you actually feel it.
So check this album out, and if it tickles your fancy, support this "master percussionist" (who has also played with nmperign and Nate Wooley, to name a few others) by attending a show of his in your hometown. - Mar 25, 10----------
ArtistIn order to further complete (y)our Feldman collection here at KiC, here's a little something that might, at the very least, grab your attention. Also, I'd like to share some thoughts with you regarding this album, maybe as a review, maybe just as a general "whatever" kind of text. Please take it with a grain of salt.
The first piece, just titled "Piano and Orchestra", constantly shifts in form and color like one of those abstract expressionist paintings he admired so much; while this is a bit far from action painting, it certainly resembles the process behind it. If one is to trace the origins of the "method", one could go back to Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros and his New York workshop at the end of the thirties, a location that attracted more than one future American star such as Jackson Pollock. This place of experiments in material aspects of the two-dimensional art brought forward an enormous force to the theoretical background of Pollock et al. As a 'venting' grounds for Siqueiros' heavily contrasting ideas about art in general (as much as a result of the "good neighbor" policy with Mexico), it's no wonder that a whole generation of painters and the musicians later associated with them share little bits of thought from the angry, outspoken, deeply militant Siqueiros. I'd like to argument that one of these ideas was that of a 'new classicism'. Siqueiros, like most good avant-gardists, wanted to eradicate the formal pressure of history upon art, but unlike most of those same good avant-gardists, he also wanted to create a 'new classicism'. He wasn't referring to pretty old neoclassicism as we know it, but a simpler, perhaps more utopian endeavor: the replacement of a tradition of repetition with a tradition of the now (almost of improvisation), self-renewing and self-rupturing.
Since this is intended to just be a brief text about the album, I'll stop there for you to interpret and research as you will, considering that yes, the idea is quite paradoxical, maybe philosophically vacuous, and has been a subject of a myriad discussions regarding the historical vanguard in general too. So, soldiering on with the argument and ignoring all sorts of holes, there is a Feldman quote within the liner notes in this album, in relation to "Rothko Chapel", that brought me to it all: "While it was possible with the paintings to reiterate color and scale and still retain dramatic interest, I felt that the music called for a series of highly contrasted merging sections. I envisioned an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek temples." Of course, it seems like an easy shot, but considering that the chapel itself is a kind of neo-spiritual monument informed by paintings that tried to lure the spectator into a 'fourth dimension' (deeper into space, deeper into time), the whole work seems imbibed with this idea of a new classic. Rothko and Feldman had found it: the spiritual experience absolutely never gets old, and proof abounds everywhere you look in human culture. By entering the fourth dimension, each prayer, each meditation, would be constantly renewed in states of mind unshackled from Enlightenment and furiously grasped upon perception, the mindlessly empiric, the perpetually changing. And yet, it would all be framed by monumentality, by death and the immobility of a classical frieze. The tradition of the now would be practically complete, with its minimal, almost silent, horizontal micro-revolutions represented both in painting and music. Action painting be damned, this would be truly transcendental for both the individual and the collective ("highly contrasted merging sections"). Like the ending of the piece, it would be utterly sublime.
"Durations II" is the other side of the coin: with only the pitches specified, the performer is practically required to do 'action playing' and keep the listener on the edge of his or her seat. Each recording, then, would be like each painting hung on the wall, a different experience out of the same work, a frame that is always self-renewing; not a 'style', but a sort of new form of tradition.
Here's the album for you to enjoy. I hope I piqued some of your interest; I did not intend to make a solid essay or review, and instead went along with my intuition to bring a flawed idea about a possible interpretation for you to consider when listening to these pieces. As for the recording itself, I think it's good enough. There's other versions out there that are more powerful and/or severe in their treatment of the music, but this one is fine and compiles three of Feldman's most evocative pieces. In any case, there you go: - Mar 01, 10----------
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Ensemble Pittoresque formed in 1977 when "The Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, Fripp & Eno, Pere Ubu and a wide variety of mainstream artists pounded the world with their personal pinnacles of artistic brilliance." Many see Ensemble Pittoresque as fore-bearers of "cold wave," whatever that is... And while it may be true that there would be no Cold Cave without Ensemble Pittoresque, I hear this more as a cross between Bowie's Low and This Heat, whatever that means...
Most songs follow a deceptively simple early synth-pop format, and do it incredibly well, but I'm not sure that I would be discussing this album at all if it weren't for "Auratorium." The first time I put on For This Is Past I was half-asleep and ready to call it a night when this track grabbed my attention and really threw me back into the music. I sat up wide-awake until the record was finished. "Auratorium" stands out from the rest of the record because although it may not be, its choral samples give it a much denser feel. Its forward thrust gives the song an almost proto-house feel. It's just exciting music, plain and simple. Elsewhere "Maitre Satori" uses classic "O Superman" vocoders to great effect. Every song here is a synth-pop classic. It's still available from their label's website, and I believe you get both the LP and CD when you order it, so you should feel even more inclined to pick up this fantastic record! - Feb 28, 10----------What I offer to you, technically, is the soundtrack to the movie of the same title; however, "soundtrack" is a bit misleading. The film is a documentary of Fred Frith and his interactions with heavyweights of the late 80's avant-rock/improv scene (Tom Cora, John Zorn, and Arto Lindsay, to name a few). Again, "documentary" may not be the best word choice, for even the subtitle reads "A ninety minute celluloid improvisation by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel". That is, Step Across the Border was shot through the sporadic filming of band practices (mainly Skeleton Crew, I believe), live performances, accidental conversations, and impromptu improvisations. Thus resulting in a collage of (i) music at moments resembling Frith's solo work but mostly in the vein of his 80's colloborative efforts (especially Art Bears and the aforementioned Skeleton Crew), (ii) found urban sound, and (iii) musings on art, life, and politics. No better is this, and dare I say Frith himself, encapsulated with this final scene.But again, what I provide below is the soundtrack. Please do add this film to your Netflix queue, if not for its merits as a film, but at least for the wondrous integration of sound and vision. There is a certain tenderness to some of the shots, in particular those with René Lussier, wherein the improvisations take on an extremely melodic form, almost defiantly composed, yet obviously spontaneous. The only further musing I have is on the track 'Morning Song': I cannot shake the feeling that, with the use of the alarm as a rhythmic element, this track is a nod to Derek Bailey.
Note: Both this album and a DVD copy of the film can be purchased at the label link provided at the top of the post. - Feb 23, 10----------As much as you try to deny it, we as human are so impacted by the weather: we choose where we live based on it, we choose what we do based on it, and finally, we choose to what we listen. As much as I love Radulescu, his string quartets just do not sit well with me on a sunny and sixty Saturday morning. So when I went around today saying, "How about that weather on Sunday, am I right?" intimately connected with that sentiment is fond remembrances of lazing in the grass listening to Huntly Town, ignoring any and all responsibilities. The melodies are simple, the guitar work seldom exceeds stock folk, but the atmosphere is undeniable; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This Dublin group demands days drenched in vitamin D, and brisk, sweater nights. Let United Bible Studies proselytize the good book of springtime.
- Jan 30, 10Here we have the most fully-realized work of music this decade (though very young) has yet to see. This master-stroke of an album was apparently in the works for over a year before the three brave intellectuals who produced it finally landed on a take they found perfect enough to release. The 45 minute composition (recorded completely live with no overdubs) "Hey Jude" contains all the best elements of EAI, spectral composition, and PB&J, thus introducing a completely new immaculate genre: IEA (Industrial Elephant Anthems). Detractors have noted the uncanny similarities to Wagner's Ring Cycle, though anyone who truly dissects this music will find that Wagner is obviously inferior. Instead Not for the Faint of Dick is the kind of logical progression from Vampire Weekend's debut that Contra failed to be. Download it now, and you probably won't be disappointed.
- Jan 08, 10----------
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Errata: As revealed in the comments section by none other than KiC reader Nate Wooley, no editing or post-production went into this recording; Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller was completed all in one sitting. My confusion arose from the dating, which is explained within the comments section for the interested. Even though this invalidates a portion of my analysis, my praise for this album is steadfast, nor do I think Wrong Shape to be any less unique.
Many thanks to Nate for both reading this blog and correcting my error; I am very much so sorry for my false assumptions. Since in my review I stressed Nate's supposed transparency, I leave below my original post unedited. I do hope others enjoy the irony surrounding this post as much as I did -- so much so that it warmed my otherwise frigid bike ride.
----------Compared to his lowercase brethren, and even with consistently glowing reviews, Nate Wooley has received little to no attention from RYM free improv enthusiasts. So with Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller, recorded in August 2004, I attempt to rectify this glaring omission.
As a member of the trio that released Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing, KiC readers ought to be familiar with his name, if not also his playing style. Although Wooley's work with Lonberg-Holm and Roebke is exemplary (and one of my favorites from 2009), his group approach, as it should, greatly differs from his solo style. An aside: I suggest those interested in group improvisation to check out an interview with Nate over at bagatellen. In this interview he describes the way in which he listens to his band mates, focusing on "cycles".
Indeed comparisons to the likes of Greg Kelley and Axel Dörner are apt, but at the same time incredibly reductionist. Yes, these three trumpeters heavily employ extended techniques, but those casual words -- "similar to" -- betray both the feeling and the creative process that goes into each of these artist's improvisations.
Throughout Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller I hear flashes of resemblance -- the timbrel fluttering around the tenth minute could easily be an excerpt in Kelley's Self-Hate Index -- but delightful quirks destroy the homogeneity hypothesis. For instance, around the fifteen minute mark, a field recording of (what seems to be) a BBC television report on the 2004 Presidential election can be heard. In this sample, the reporter makes reference to the "final hours" of campaigning. With this time-stamp, Wooley wears post-production on his sleeve (or at least stitched prominently on his jeans), giving the listener a welcomed moment of transparency. Silence, as well, is employed prominently in this fifty-odd minute piece, via Wooley's deft navigation between nearly inaudible hiss, font-size six licks, and overbearing feedback.
As a whole -- a precaution to the meek, this album is only one track -- through this unusual narrative, Nate Wooley provides not only a snapshot of lowercase technique, but also a glance at his distorted voice. - Jan 04, 10----------
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RYMTopology is a swath of mathematics that investigates the properties preserved under a continuous transformation. Originating from an in depth study of the real line, this field equips the analyst with the ability to abstract beyond the familiar, in addition to generating a convenient link between analysis and the other major fields of mathematics -- algebra and geometry.
The most commonly used tool of a topologist is a homeomorphism. Essentially defining topological equivalence, two spaces are said to be homeomorphic if one can be deformed into the other in a well-behaved manner. As such, topology is frequently called "rubber sheet geometry". For instance, in jest, a topologist is said to not know the difference between a donut and a coffee mug. Put as simply as possible, topologies allow mathematicians to "stretch", "cut", and "glue" abstract spaces
The applications for this field are countless outside of pure mathematics, and in titling this album so, Joe McPhee supplies an interesting and unforeseen context to examine his music. I had grown accustom to thinking of jazz as a means of expression, with free jazz and its sub-genres as the liberal extension. From the spiritual revelry of Pharoah Sanders to the existential musings of Sachiko M, I had been caught up in this tautology. However, through this Po Music, I was able to break free and view each passage as a deformation of another. The free improvisation of "Age" blends seamlessly into the reinterpretation of older styles of "Blues for new Chicago". Before the listener can grasp what has occurred, all structure is cut away in the titular final track, through Radu Malfatti's electro-acoustic explorations.
In many ways, this topological framework is useful to understand the traditional role of an improviser. They extract motifs from their conscious, then instantaneously stitch them back together. Although Topology is said to be a non-idiomatic session, the interpretation is similar. And this fantastic cast (the aforementioned Malfatti and McPhee, Irène Schweizer, and others) do not disappoint.
Sorry for the stodgy math! - Dec 29, 09----------
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Xu Cheng's Wild Fox Chants was brought to my attention by Danny's wonderful, but dormant, blog 'By Chance Upon Waking.' A couple things made me excited: first, logistically, it was free for download. I had not heard of Cheng, and I might not have been willing to shell out $20 for a disc of "prepared guitar" by an artist I hadn't heard of. By putting it out free on Archival, Cheng really sucked me in and made me a fan.
The second thing that got me interested was, of course, the "prepared guitar." Whenever I read "prepared" to describe an instrument, my mind naturally recalls John Cage's prepared piano pieces, and although the instruments are quite different, I think a familiarity with Cage's works could be a partial introduction to this. There are scrapes of the strings, tightened and loosened string, plucked more than struck. Indeed, large passages seem to center directly around various textured metals striking the strings as the tuning pegs loosen, then tighten, creating a tone variation that is both familiar and unique (in timing).
It should be said that this is not quite eai or microtonal, although a Keith Rowe fan might find something here to like. This, like most genres that require (instead of recommend) close listening, goes to great lengths to focus the listener on both newer compositional methods (variable timing, odd repetitions, atonal playing that highlights the percussive qualities of the instrument), and on the physical properties of the instrument (the sound of the bridge, the uses of the tuning pegs, the electronics in the pickups). In this way, the artist can heighten the listener's awareness of the inherent properties of the guitar, and work to dissolve the notions of "intuitive" playing. In short, it is not the intuitive way to pick up a guitar and play open chords. Rather, the intuitive way to play a guitar is to bat at it, twist its knobs, and shake it to effect reverberation. - Dec 29, 09----------
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RYMComposed in 1999 and premiered in 2000, L'Amour de Loin is Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's first opera. As a reinterpretation of Jaufré Rudel's La vida breve, Saariaho, along with librettist Amin Maalouf, tells a story of idealized love from afar. Set in the 12th century, through five acts, a jaded Parisian falls in love with a woman from Tripoli, whom he has never met. The male lead, Jaufré, travels to Tripoli to meet his distant lover, Clémence, but falls ill during the voyage. Upon arriving in the modern day Libya, Jaufré perishes in his lovers arms.
Although Saariaho fits nicely alongside the contemporary composition that litters this domain, L'Amour may not be the best introduction to Saariaho's work. In fact, I cast aside this piece on first listen earlier this year, finally revisiting it after having heard her Chamber Music and at Alex Ross' bequest. Kaija, having studied at IRCAM, should be of interest to Les espaces acoustiques adorers; however, to the best of my knowledge, Saariaho does not employ spectral techniques in L'Amour, nor in any of her other works.
At the time of this composition, both Saariaho and Maalouf -- a Lebanese also living in Paris -- were expatriates; most certainly, the two's experience with voluntary exile helped to warp this meditation on international obsession. I am still a recent convert to opera, but I can confidently say that L'Amour is a work that demands to be heard -- many commentators described it as a 21st century Tristan and Isolde.
Before I call it a day, some housekeeping. The release I have been describing is a performance at the Finnish National Opera. The label link directs you to Deutsche Grammophon's DVD release. Additionally, below, I have included a link to the audio from this DVD, for which I cannot find an official release.
Download. - Dec 29, 09----------
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RYMAs sometimes happens, after I finished the upload I found out, while searching for the above links, that Mutant Sounds has already posted this record. However, if you listen to the record, you'll see that it generally fits with this site, and I know that some of you don't like Rapidshare, so I kept the post.
This post fits nicely with the Jocy and Hallett posts from earlier, ie. female vocals, sure, but vocals mixed with a wide array of sounds, presented in pieces that span several genres. The first track, for instance, gives off a sort of Nico vibe, with wavering vocals, almost ritualistic, layered on top of fluttering pulses and random noises and clicks. "Lines" follows, and has a distinctly early electronics feel, arpeggios flash back and forth like Christmas lights on a string, tempting you to screw up your perception by predicting or skipping ahead. These electronics (perhaps a manipulated synth?) resurface against a meandering violin in "Play," a track devoid of vocals for long stretches.
The last three tracks are a little more "out," seemingly focusing on the vocal manipulations we've seen from Meredith Monk, Ratkje, and several others on the blog, with these vocals more improvised against a varied backdrop of clicks and small instruments. I haven't heard anything after this by Fuchs, but apparently she is still very active. Her site link above is basically her CV, and the Mutant Sounds link provides a good overview of things she has done since this.
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As for the site, I am going to continue to revise entries as I can. I realized over the weekend that many people link to this site on their own blogs and sites. Additionally, many artists have used the blurbs I've typed up for their own sites. Since this site is about the musicians, and since I really appreciate their work, I want to give those artists better quality. Therefore, I am going to try to improve the posts that I know for certain have been used by artists on their own sites.
Likewise, if you link to KiC on your blog or site, I want you to use this comment box to give me a link to your blog or site so I can reciprocate. When I redid the template for this site, I lost my link box. I did not want to take it down, but I screwed up. Please help me to regenerate it! - Dec 23, 09----------
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We've interrupted this regularly scheduled broadcast for a re-blog from the fantastic and unjustly esoteric Twice Zonked!.
With releases from, among others, Cage, Bailey, Lucier, and Ashley, I suppose it is easy for Coria's breathtaking solo prepared piano work, En rouge et noir, to get lost among the Cramps shuffle. In addition to a continuous, approximately twenty minute long rendition, this release is also broken down into twelve discrete vignettes.
Coria violently commences in Materiali A, where the piano "almost sounds as though a rake head was laid inside." This approach, carried over through a few parts, resembles Derek Bailey at his most aggressive. As the Materiali progress from A to N, Coria's playing dissipates into sparser territory, with seemingly electro-acoustic elements in the middle sections. By happenstance, in my most recent playing, Martin Siewert & Martin Brandlmayr's Too Beautiful to Burn succeeded En rouge et noir. Siewert and Brandlmayr's first track, "Form", provided an excellent counterpoint, resembling Coria in sound, but obviously not in execution.
Although this LP was initially released in 1976 by Cramps, it has since been re-released by the aforementioned label in 2004, then by Strange Days in 2007 -- both in CD format. Seeing as neither label's site is in English, I feel it safe to provide a download link, from what I believe to be the 2004 issue. However, I linked to Strange Days, in hopes that our Japanese readers can find an in-print copy. - Dec 16, 09----------
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RYMThis was limited to 66 copies, which the label page is showing are sold out. Given Aleph Naught has put out a couple free things online, I think it should be safe to pass this along. I was listening to this record, and looking stuff up on it when I learned that Anthony Mangicapra did the artwork for this. I met Anthony recently, and he was a great guy, really cool to talk with about music. I need to get around to reviewing his music, too. For the time being, I'll cover this album, which is an EP, to be more precise.
Some might call this dark ambient, and I see the dark aspect to it, but there is really no comparison to Lustmord or anything like that. This is more heavy, undulating synth drone, with the volume pushing beyond the canvass in redlining pulses, streaks of melody paradoxically high pitched, but pressed low in the mix. The feeling is that of attending a rehearsal of five minutes of Gubaidulina and sustaining blunt force trauma to the ear. The volume distorts the sound, the textures flatten and stretch, all the while pushed by a persistent, increasing melody below.
For the record, I don't like when distortion is used to sort of "cover things up," so to speak. I really enjoy the sound of static and distortion, obviously, but unless there is more, or unless it is fantastic distortion, it sort of makes the music anonymous or cheap. The flip side, with a few records I've posted, and this, is when it comes out natural, or measured, or fits with the piece (or whatever), it really can add something, both aesthetically, and intellectually. I think the things that I take the most from this is the static is a sort of framing mechanism for the core melody that I mentioned. It sort of encapsulates a central melody within a ring of static. That is, the sound distorts at certain volumes, and if you think about your speaker array as being able to organize air for a certain distance, that distance from your speaker, its outer reaches, is the frame. Here, the volume distorts at a certain level, and is at the forefront of the music, thus the outer border I'm talking about.
Very cool, short, and although not revolutionary, expertly executed. - Dec 13, 09----------
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RYMI'm making this entry to memorialize Sarah Lipstate's Noveller as the first entry of the new below section highlighting exceptional new releases. Like I said in the initial review, this section is going to highlight new releases, but not offer them for sharing (keeping with the loose policy of not posting anything in print, or less than 18 months old). When I get a new live review up (you should see the most recent review on the side bar), I will do the same for the live shows. Also, all download links from 2008 are removed. Some will be replaced following re-writes. I will link to those as they surface.
This is a very cool record, in part because it takes some of her partners/acolytes, and gives it a more emotional thrust. If you're into Rhys Chatham, or Glenn Branca, you'll find just as much to like as would any fan of looped, ambient swirls derived from layered picking and plucks. KILLED in CARS has posted a great deal of albums focusing solely on the piano, but slowly there has been a build of guitar-centered albums. As a guitar player myself, I am always on the lookout for records that are "guitar records" but are anything but simple fingerpicking or shredding exercises. Lipstate creates a beautiful record from very few elements, but don't let the scarcity of components throw you off: I considered this one of the most accomplished No Fun releases in large part because of the variety here. Lipstate captures that initial rush of creativity some feel when they get a new pedal, or stumble upon some of the more precious sounds a guitar can make. Alternately, she is unafraid to tune into some of the more menacing aspects of the guitar, the scraping noises it can make, its internal growl and hostility.
Please, by all means, visit her artist page, and try to catch her live. She is really putting out good stuff. I am so sad that I missed her show earlier this year at the Kitchen, but given the consistent quality of what's done there, and from the photos, I can safely say that Lipstate is taking full advantage of the artistic community in New York by working dance pieces, and exploring a host of the sounds that seem to pour out from all of the decaying brick boxes and smokey late night haunts this city has. - Dec 01, 09----------
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RYMAn album that I found for a couple reasons: both on the Adore the Freak list, and the atonelectric peripherals list Doc threw together, as well as general acclaim (despite the criminally low rating count). Birthed by strong musicians in play, the affair was pushed into a higher level by the decision to play/record outside. There are several ways to try to get out of your "habit energy" (a goal a lot of mid-20th century composers longed to achieve): play an instrument you're not familiar with, play with other musicians that you don't know, work in new genres, and aside from those, others get less at the musician-instrument or composition aspects of making music, and more at the mindset of the musicians. This is one of them. By simply going outside, the moods of the musicians seem to have changed, the nature of the recording took on the warmth of field recordings (actually, it sort of is a field recording, blurring the lines of what that actually means). For everyone trying to hide in the forest and still put out tapes, take note: knowing your jazz can mean all the difference.
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- Chen Santa Maria - Chen Santa Maria (2008) https://t.co/fMR6tQritb http://t.co/9VNTbjEZymMay 20, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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- Lekan Animashaun - Low Profile (1995) https://t.co/sULuSdxeLd http://t.co/ZWusDif8VyMay 15, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- First vaporware(?) disc I've been into in a while. Excellent variety, from abstract electronic to synth funk, etc. http://t.co/CrZi3hps6z
- This is perhaps the best juke I've heard lately. The last two tracks are like ghetto tech Autechre. http://t.co/BIdSObU5fA
- Really enjoyed this yesterday. Chinese elements, shades of Dirty Projectors, free jazz, math rock, etc. http://t.co/LAHZViv0C4
- Speed Jack - Surge (1996) https://t.co/8oWjdrAgMB http://t.co/JsT4vKqe6JMay 12, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Charlotte Hug & Chantale Laplante - Brilliant Days (2003) https://t.co/cglA82Hl25 http://t.co/J9Ak0JwvqDMay 06, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Alessandro Bosetti & Annette Krebs - Bosetti / Krebs (2003) https://t.co/0UJH0t8xX4 http://t.co/kPGkk1uYHRMay 04, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Duster - Contemporary Movement (2000) https://t.co/sTJdGfrbZZ http://t.co/BqEKjmu7SBMay 01, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- The last Xela record. I'm hearing this for the first time thanks to RYM. Xela - Exorcism by _type http://t.co/lpWxUxqdkT on #SoundCloud
- Spiral Tribe - Tecno Terra (1993) https://t.co/IlVM3dTfMn http://t.co/gXwwxtkAZAApr 28, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Luke Slater - 92-94 (1997) https://t.co/aC7cNocYA7 http://t.co/tiiJAL4e8PApr 27, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Kouhei Matsunaga - Self VA. (2010) https://t.co/q8dK5RZuf6 http://t.co/uqbGO802s0Apr 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Loren Nerell - Indonesian Soundscapes (1999) https://t.co/ZwU1OHYfvc http://t.co/dVKBzZsjOuApr 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Noël Akchoté - Alike Joseph (2000) https://t.co/6bGYNkUSDb http://t.co/eDwtTnfQ54Apr 24, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I can finally, easily, fill in the few blanks in my SUNN 0))) knowledge. Awesome. http://t.co/fa86F7GZr7
- Amazing listen. I guess this is a reissue of the same thing from a few years back. Brilliant improvisations. http://t.co/NDVQIoVywz
- Really digging this sound. Obviously juke, but there are electro and grime elements, too. (via @nohighs) http://t.co/00BISQJ8xT
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Favorites
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Likes
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Posts
- May 20, 13
High Five: RP Boo
www.xlr8r.com
When throwing the word "veteran" around with the players of Chicago's juke/footwork scene, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that RP Boo was making moves roughly a decade before the likes of DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn. The artist born Kavain Space is credited with being a key part of creating the hype... - May 19, 13
shamek farrah- first impressions
www.youtube.com
In 1972, at age 25, shamek farrah signed with Strata-East Records and in 1974 his first jazz album "First Impressions" was released. - May 19, 13
Julian Cope’s ‘Krautrocksampler’ in PDF form
dangerousminds.net
You have to love someone who scans every single page of their favourite book just so they can spread the wordy magic with their friends on the internet. So, big thanks then to Evan Levine at the Swan Fungus blog for doing just that with the rare-as-hens-teeth Krautrocksampler by Julian Cope. A his... - May 19, 13
Maja Ratkje - River Mouth Echoes
www.youtube.com
Masterpiece by Ratkje. River Mouth Echoes marks an important composition for the composer .....the pressence of a loving attentive awareness which shyes away... - May 19, 13
"Monkey Drive" by The Kandy Whales Official Music Video
www.youtube.com
Music Video shot by SWEETBREADSTUDIOS for the longer together Kandy Whales (2005) Directed by: Jena Serbu Shot on a Panasonic DVX by Jeff Cuellar. FEATURING:... - May 19, 13
Staubgold Radio #8 Music Out of Place | Reboot.fm
reboot.fm
Staubgold Radio: Music Out Of Place Mit Markus Detmer und Sylvain Garcia alias Le K. Zumindest virtuell steht heute Sylvain Garcia alias Le K aus - May 18, 13
Anne Guthrie / Richard Kamerman (Live on "Bedroom Athlete", WNYU, 5/18/13)
soundcloud.com
Listen to "Bedroom Athlete" / Anne Guthrie / Richard Kamerman (Live on "Bedroom Athlete", WNYU, 5/18/13) | Explore the largest ... - May 17, 13
F.Chopin-Tamas Vasary:B flat minor Scherzo Op.31
www.youtube.com
F.Chopin-Tamas Vasary:B flat minor Scherzo Op.31 - May 17, 13
Everything on here is good.
DUBLIMINAL BOUNCE | Juke/Footwork, Ghettotech Label in Hiroshima Japan.
dubliminalbounce.com
DBLB-020 HASEGAWA-4200/GWIK EP注目投稿日時: 2013/05/06 投稿者: DUBLIMINAL BOUNCE Artist:HASEGAWA-4200 Title:GWIK EP Release Date:2013/5/6 Cat No:DBLB-020 Format:Digital Price:Free1.Gwik pt.3(P.I.U) 2.Gwik pt.5(Poison) 3.Gwik pt.6(Along And Dance) 4.Gwik pt.7(Moscow) 5.Gwik pt.8(Reflexxx) All Track Produced b... - May 17, 13
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer (B-Side) ft Arthur Russell
soundcloud.com
An exclusive stream of the previously unheard version of Talking Heads performing 'Psycho Killer' featuring Arthur Russell on cello. - May 17, 13
'unbalanced in (unbalanced out)' - Chabala, Jones, Nakamura, Martin, Mukarji & Paiuk
www.youtube.com
Extract from 'Unbalanced In (Unbalanced Out)', a CD by Barry Chabala, Bonnie Jones, Louisa Martin, Tisha Mukarji, Toshimaru Nakamura & Gabriel Paiuk. The pie... - May 17, 13
DRY THE RAIN by THE BETA BAND
www.youtube.com
THIS IS THE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO FOR DRY THE RAIN MADE BY ROBIN JONES OF THE BETA BAND. TRANSFERED FROM A MOULDY VHS RESCUED FROM HIS FATHERS ATTIC.. ENJOY..... - May 17, 13
Thomas Köner avec Yann Beauvais: Tu Sempre
www.youtube.com
Thomas Köner / Yann Beauvais: Tu Sempre Album: Zyklop (Reissue) Originally released on Mille Plateaux then reissued on Rhizomatique Records. Genre: Electroni... - May 17, 13
Sylvester Anfang II @ Cafe OTO 2012-08-08
soundcloud.com
Listen to Stuart Groves / Sylvester Anfang II @ Cafe OTO 2012-08-08 | Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of m... - May 17, 13
Sale SAT MAY 18 Rain or Shine! North Portland
portland.craigslist.org
0 favorites∨∧CLportlandmultnomah coall for sale / wantedgarage & moving salesReply to:ctztv-3809089215@sale.craigslist.org [?] flag [?] : miscategorized prohibited spam best ofPosted: Sale SAT MAY 18 Rain or Shine! North Portland (3358 N. Baldwin St.) N. Baldwin Street at N. Gravenstein Avenue NORTH... - May 17, 13
WhoMohW
www.youtube.com
Hit Track From White Limo's "WhoMohW" out now on Fogged Records http://foggedrecords.blogspot.com/ - May 15, 13
Outer Worlds #11: The L.A. Exodus
www.wweek.com
When I first moved to Portland about 15 years ago, the fun kneejerk complaint was directed at Californians who migrated north to take advantage of our lack of sales tax, better coffee, and milde - May 15, 13
Spacemen 3 catalogue receiving deluxe reissue treatment; all drug-dealers' phones immediately begin.
www.tinymixtapes.com
Sonic rumination as devotional tribute? Throbbing repetition as celestial transport? Conversational poetry as euphoric confessional? Gospel music for the willing junky? Pleasure-damaged wasteland or morphine-dripped utopia? Is this Heaven or Hell? It’s “Heaven on Earth;” Heaven on Earth all over aga... - May 14, 13
Berliner Ring - Good Evening
www.youtube.com
Label: meakusma Catalog#: mea 009 Format: Vinyl, 12" Country: Belgium Distribution by Clone: http://clone.nl/item25373.html Release Date: December 2012 BERLI... - May 14, 13
DeepChord - dc10 - 01 Untitled
www.youtube.com
http://www.discogs.com/DeepChord-dc10/master/4421 Drift Deeper Youtube Channel was setup to promote and help people discover deep electronic music, I do not ... - May 14, 13
I completely agree. Check these out.
http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/203589_275083212607621_795065578_q.jpg
Think Tank House, Lincoln NE
In case you missed this weekend's show at the Think Tank, here are some mp3s to tide you over. What a great show! http://www.mediafire.com/?9dymwtn3ufza42d - May 14, 13
Watch 32 discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes
io9.com
If you place 32 metronomes on a static object and set them rocking out of phase with one another, they will remain that way indefinitely. Place them on a moveable surface, however, and something very interesting (and very mesmerizing) happens. - May 13, 13
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
ca.mubi.com
Orson Welles narrates this evocation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic poem animated by Larry Jordan using a cut-out style. - May 13, 13
Another good one from Dubb Parade.
Gumma In Da Tek(DBLB-017), by Dubb Parade
dubliminal-bounce.bandcamp.com
7 track album
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Recent Tracks
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- Fuked Up by DJ/PURPLE/IMAGE
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ClipseFlying LotusZelienopleAraabMUZIKAndy StottAutechreActressMadlibZombyGhédalia TazartèsG.H.Clams CasinoDemdike StareThe WeekndFreddie Gibbs & MadlibA$AP RockyJandekBjörkGiacinto ScelsiSmegmaShackletonJay-Z & Kanye WestGucci ManeJ DillaJason LescalleetRadioheadKaija SaariahooOoOOGrouperGrimesKrengFriedrich CerhaMark FellHoly OtherSalemBroadcast and The Focus GroupTim HeckerSandwell DistrictCyclo.Jon RoseFriedrich JürgensonSquarepusherPan SonicBig BloodBroadcastNo-Neck Blues BandDaphne OramArthur RussellTyler, the CreatorMy Bloody Valentine- 63 plays
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Mixes
- 42 plays / Created Mar 04, 13Chopping up moments, stretching out moments, and creating environments. This is a soundtrack to a move and a new start.
- 50 plays / Created Feb 04, 13This is my full set from Other Music, which aired 2/3/13 (my son's birthday).
- 108 plays / Created Dec 29, 12This is my highly stylized take on the CW show 'Supernatural.' Each of these tracks is either setting a mood for something in the show, a theme for a character in the show, or an homage to some aspect of the show I enjoy. Each of the longer (10 min. plus) tracks can be skipped about halfway through if you're not feeling it. I might edit this with annotations, but they're not taking in 8tracks currently. Carry on!
- 99 plays / Created Mar 13, 12
- 62 plays / Created Sep 05, 11Wide range of tracks, from vocals, to indie ballads, to eai and classical. Of course, this is a synopsis of the week's listening.
- 75 plays / Created Aug 28, 11A wide ranging mix of drone, eai, and techno with some metal thrown in for good measure. There was flow when I put it together, but I promise nothing.
- 42 plays / Created Jun 19, 11Nine tracks including music by Aki Onda, Factums, and Laurie Scott Baker.
- 64 plays / Created Jun 06, 11Nine tracks including music by Andy Stott, Black Zone Myth Chant, and DJ Sniff. Recent ratings and a few recent faves.
- 47 plays / Created May 30, 11Twelve tracks including music by Ensemble Economique, Im Jahrtal, and Jérôme Noetinger, Michel Doneda, eRikm.
- 45 plays / Created May 30, 11Eight tracks including music by Axolotl, Islaja, and Krzysztof Orluk. Chosen (literally) at random
- 49 plays / Created May 29, 11Eight tracks including music by Big Sean, Eddie Prévost & Jennifer Allum, and Lee Noble. Testing this out.
- 25 plays / Created May 14, 13African guitar based music recorded between 1951 & 1970. Mostly solo performances with guitar & vocals
- 10 plays / Created May 13, 138 tracks featuring Cradle of Filth, Chthonic, and King Diamond.
- 40 plays / Created May 12, 13I'm about to graduate soon. The last year has been spent making the same mix over and over. Mixes became a viable part of my art practice which was unexpected and it makes me sad that I've neglected 8tracks ever since. So here's a silly mix for some post-graduate reminiscing. Alternative version for art graduates: http://www.mixcloud.com/MattColquhoun/how-to-stay-in-touch-with-art-once-you-graduate/
- 14 plays / Created May 12, 13
- 15 plays / Created May 02, 13Mississippi Records Tape Series. sahelsounds.com. Rip by nicholab for ghostcapital.blogspot.com
- 5 plays / Created May 02, 13From sahelsounds.com. Riped by nicholab for ghostcapital.blogspot.com
- 4 plays / Created Apr 27, 13Do you below the overpass go, with a fifth in your fist reminiscing the kiss of a love that just didn't love as much as you did?
- 15 plays / Created Apr 27, 13Relativley known and lesser known '80s revisionists from the '00s and the '10s
- 4 plays / Created Apr 23, 13Some important moments in the history of recorded music
- 3 plays / Created Apr 20, 13Biased variety! Originally started this to give my forgotten music downloads/oddities a home before deletion. -but now some of these tracks have become my favorites. Hooray repetition!
- 102 plays / Created Apr 20, 138 tracks including Sisters of Mercy, Unto Ashes, and Esben and the Witch.
- 40 plays / Created Apr 18, 13"The thing is, if you just do stuff and nothing happens, what's it all mean? What's the point? Oh right, this whole thing is about self-acceptance. [...] No, you know what, why I'm here in the first place--is to sell you meth! You're nothing to me but customers! I made you my bitch! You okay with that? Huh? You accept?" fanmix for jesse pinkman of the amc's breaking bad.
- 46 plays / Created Apr 17, 13More Indian style heavy funk from the 70's
- 213 plays / Created Apr 17, 13indian style heavy funk from the 70's
- 23 plays / Created Apr 12, 13From solace to silence to loneliness and back again.
- 16 plays / Created Apr 11, 13Assorted vinyl 45s (or “chehel-o-panj dorehs”) released in Iran during the 1960s and ‘70s.
- 23 plays / Created Apr 10, 13Like this mix? Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2013/04/lv-is-lv-mississippi-rcrds-008.html
- 36 plays / Created Apr 04, 13A mix to cry to, featuring Bon Iver and Sigur Rós and so on.
- 87 plays / Created Apr 04, 138 tracks featuring Zola Jesus, Bauhaus, and Spiritual Front.
- 28 plays / Created Apr 01, 13they’re pacing and glowing bright their faces all snowy and white bury their paws in the stone make for my heart as their home
- 9 plays / Created Apr 01, 13if there was an award called the "world's best mother" you would win it every single year.
- 49 plays / Created Mar 25, 13songs for the madman in a stetson "he's broken and he's no good to nobody." // eddie kreezer (from the 2011 film hick) fanmix
- 14 plays / Created Mar 25, 13AfroFunk, Highlife & JuJu from 1970s Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2013/04/nigria-70-swt-tims.html
- 13 plays / Created Mar 25, 13PHASE IV: The last in the MAUR HRTBRK series...
- 118 plays / Created Mar 23, 13for rebel boys in dystopian landscapes, from solitary confinement to the new york city underground. for the one who won't take the pills and won't allow himself to be considered an animal. for the brave soul who will look his government in the eyes, smile, and say, "i won't let you color my emotions gray. i'm in technicolor."
- 6 plays / Created Mar 22, 13Post Punk comp. Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2012/11/nmerough-trade-c81-cassette.html
- 788 plays / Created Mar 20, 13Highlife music from Mali in the seventies
- 25 plays / Created Mar 20, 13African high-life from the seventies
- 96 plays / Created Mar 16, 138 tracks featuring Doves, Stars, and Morrissey.
- 5 plays / Created Mar 16, 13when it's 6.30 in the morning and you can't sleep anymore. blackbirds are singing outside and your little red bicycle is waiting for you.
- 104 plays / Created Mar 14, 138tracks including music by Mumford and Sons, Murder by Death, and the Civil Wars.
- 123 plays / Created Mar 13, 13It's the real folk blues people. Like this mix? Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/
- 14 plays / Created Mar 12, 13Like this mix? Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2013/02/wv-0cn-wv-se.html
- 7 plays / Created Mar 12, 13Like this mix? Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2013/02/im-gonna-live-nyhow-ntil-i-die.html
- 6 plays / Created Mar 12, 13Like it? Get it here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2013/03/ill-mt-you-on-that-othr-shor.html
- 29 plays / Created Mar 12, 13V/A ~ There Is Death in the Pot c90 A Moahaha Mixtape सølγ שаябlɛş TRILL10 2011
- 14 plays / Created Mar 12, 13Music of the world DL here: http://pettyvendetta.blogspot.com/2012/10/rituals.html
- 20 plays / Created Mar 12, 13VA - Winter Is Blue C90 mixtape holy warbles trill 03 2k11
- 11 plays / Created Mar 10, 13"fate can't explain or apologize for you.."
- 89 plays / Created Mar 08, 138 tracks featuring Chelsea Wolfe, The Horrors, and Joy Division.
- 8 plays / Created Mar 07, 13Screw what you saw in her eyes, it was all contrived.
- 61 plays / Created Mar 06, 13There was one SOLDIER named Sephiroth who was better than the rest. But when he found out about the terrible experiments that made him he began to hate Shinra. And then over time he began to hate everything; Shinra and the people against them. Sephiroth hated the planet so much he wanted to make it go away. The people who tried to stop him, there were a lot of battles. For every battle, there was more sadness. . Sadness was the price to see it end. ( for my friend andrew.)
- 22 plays / Created Mar 06, 13Like a fallen angel in black I pass the past caped and masked.
- 177 plays / Created Feb 27, 138 tracks by Interpol, Pulp, and David Bowie. Image by Ellen von Unwerth
- 8 plays / Created Feb 23, 13When you must cross the threshold to reach beyond your true love.
- 7 plays / Created Feb 23, 13As the Sun sets through the CO2...I wish you could disappear
- 8 plays / Created Feb 22, 13Some pretty cool trax that I can't stop listening to, including Studio Killers, Die Antwoord and music from Mulan. Not even ashamed!
- 49 plays / Created Feb 22, 1324 tracks including music by My Bloody Valentine, Autolux, and Seefeel.
- 56 plays / Created Feb 18, 138 tracks including music by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
- 44 plays / Created Feb 15, 13❝The spirit of Shibuya runs through these walls.❞ a playlist dedicated to my best friend. she is an inspiration. ( i will role play this guy one day )
- 124 plays / Created Feb 13, 138 tracks featuring Timber Timbre, Marissa Nadler, and Nine Inch Nails.
- 14 plays / Created Feb 10, 13Songs that taste like your lover's lips and dark red wine.
- 133 plays / Created Feb 09, 13Carefree, with Nancy Jacobs and Her Sisters, Ebenezer Calender and His Maringer Band, and Dorothy Masuka.
- 72 plays / Created Feb 09, 13we’re reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was but no one is ever gonna love you more than I do no one’s gonna love you more than I do
- 125 plays / Created Feb 09, 13Noctis: I thought I was seeing things. Looking back I was undeniably mistaken. I wonder what the other person is thinking when they glance at each other. Our hidden conversation before war, when we recognize one another.
- 11 plays / Created Feb 09, 13Moved to make, change is caked onto my feet and now our walls - place your hand over mine and let them dry and harden there over time.
- 72 plays / Created Feb 09, 13paint the galaxy with two floating bodies boy and girl with their fingers intertwined and memories that outlined the day they lied eyes on each other space is all around them with glinting blue and red burning lights rocks miss them because they're traveling so slow but the hair on the tops of their heads have risen and so are the edges of their clothes
- 64 plays / Created Feb 07, 138 tracks featuring IAMX, Imogen Heap, and How to Destroy Angels.
- 24 plays / Created Feb 07, 13When we met a rare astronomical event occurred, The Transit of Venus, where Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun.
- 41 plays / Created Feb 07, 13"almost burned out my eyes/ threw my ears down on the floor.."
- 13 plays / Created Feb 04, 13In depth cultural anthropology selection (1957-1988) beyond the pale pleasantries of radio-friendly Aussie music. Lullabies, dream songs, mourning songs, dances, and didjeridoo. Fully annotated. Before we forget: listen.
- 69 plays / Created Feb 04, 13Ritual invocations, a sea chantey, group choruses and three children's songs from Haiti (1-2) and the Dominican Republic (3-8), part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. Some track annotation. Part of a series featuring recordings from world coffee origins, focusing on historical or cultural expressions/anomalies rather than popular western forms or expectations. I hope this demonstrates a value beyond the black gold we extract from these diverse lands and peoples.
- 12 plays / Created Feb 02, 13Field recordings, domestic records, ritual invocations, church service, love songs, songs of death, and songs of mimicry. Annotated. Part of a series featuring recordings from world coffee origins, focusing on historical or cultural expressions/anomalies rather than popular western forms or expectations. I hope this demonstrates a value beyond the black gold we extract from these diverse lands and peoples.
- 131 plays / Created Feb 02, 13Field recordings, tribal rituals, lullabies, and songs from East Africa. Annotated. Part of a series featuring music and field recordings from world coffee origins, focusing on historical or cultural expressions/anomalies rather than popular western forms or expectations. I hope this demonstrates a value beyond the black gold we extract from these diverse land and people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya#Culture
- 461 plays / Created Feb 01, 13we read their little head stones, there lied the mother of cubone.
- 74 plays / Created Jan 29, 13"a thousand twangling instruments / Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices ..." A grotto of sunshine with The Mike Sammes Singers, Harry Nilsson, and Trader Horne.
- 68 plays / Created Jan 27, 138 tracks featuring PJ Harvey, The Kills, and Morrissey. Art by MysticBlu3.
- 52 plays / Created Jan 26, 13"it's as if we no longer share a common tongue.."
- 23 plays / Created Jan 26, 13how can I trust my fractious heart knowing I have the enemy gene?
- 15 plays / Created Jan 25, 13These nights, a yard of twine and a general negligence of the law - define our love.
- 342 plays / Created Jan 18, 13When a mix lacks continuity, it just sounds like a bunch of garbage.
- 75 plays / Created Jan 12, 138 tracks featuring Prince, Eurythmics, and Duran Duran.
- 135 plays / Created Jan 12, 13
- 15 plays / Created Jan 06, 13A curated extraction of the spontaneous result of the ambient environment between the late hours of 2012 and early morning hours of 2013, excluding tracks that weren't released by the label (plus two that exceeded the filesize 8tracks allows). Pictured: our sheet for the evening, slightly color enhanced and shifting in the background. Mix in its original context, timestamped: http://www.mixcloud.com/weynagrom/playlists/sandoz-tabmans-new-years/ and DL: http://official.fm/playlists/Bu94
- 423 plays / Created Aug 15, 11Nineteen tracks including music by Arvo Pärt, Balam Acab, and Coil.
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Posts
- May 21, 13
- May 20, 13
- May 20, 13
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Tracks
