Plenty of
reviews to cover the content of this week’s Cabeza de Vaca show over at Scanner FM. Thanks as always to all those artists and labels who
sent promos in and apologies if I didn’t have time and/or space for all. There
will be another, special ambient show in only two weeks time.
Aquarelle –
August Undone [Students of Decay, 2013]
Fans of
Mountains should definitely pay close attention to this release. That is not to
imply anything derivative on offer, but that Ryan Potts’ Aquarelle project has
delivered an essential album for fans of cinematic pos-rock-ambient to rival Mountains
themselves. “August undone” achieves the perfect balance between stasis and
movement, between loud and quiet, between dense and sparse without ever feeling
like an imitation or resorting to emotional blackmail. Opening track “Within /
without” is a perfect encapsulation of the album both in title and sound. The
opening minutes blend waves of drones and noisy guitar with a distant tinkling
piano before it all suddenly seems to go still, with what seem like real life
summer beach waves lapping somewhere in the background. The sound clears and
becomes fragile and spritely, the moody heaviness suddenly bristles with
optimism as it slowly reverts to the opening sequence again. The rest of the
album follows suit, using density and volume and emotional sleight of hand to
create a diverse, intelligent and sentient panorama. This is played music, not
thought music. The short and beautifully titled “Sandpaper winds” resembles the
religious side of Popol Vuh and their similar untethered and instinctive modus
operandi as a guitar gently strums away and lifts upward in naked and fragile
joy. The epic “This is no monument” is almost Bardo Pond at times before it too
clears into a more melancholy piano-led sequence. The finale “Clockless hours”
returns the favour with a burning core of noise bookended by quieter sequences.
A stand out release for the year beyond doubt.
Xiphiidae –
Pass hidingly seek [Housecraft Recordings, 2013]
Xiphiidae –
Quaking myth [Aguirre 2013]
Across the
two Xiphiidae releases covered here, I kept getting the impression of hearing
somehow the overlap of the actions of man and of nature. In particular, there
was a very rural sense, albeit abstracted, reminding me of the uneasy harmony
of the farm where everything is allowed to grow and roam free, where nature is
close, but where everything is ultimately sown, including the “harvesting” of animals
for food.
Xiphiidae
is the long term project of Jeffry Astin who has been running and releasing on the
Housecraft Records label from Gainesville, Florida for many years. Although his
artist name is derived from the Sword Fish, a large predatory beats of the sea,
Astin’s music is anything but predatory, albeit neither is it hippie New Age
drone either. “Pass hidingly seek” was originally released on cassette in 2009,
but only now on vinyl, and feels like farm yard pop refracted through a watery
prism. Wah wah sounds control the texture of the album, marking it with drifts
of current and the wash of waves as seen from below. But deep in the core of
this is the source material, or what sound like a blend of field recordings and
guitars that keep the emotion glued to pangs of old-time nostalgia. As well as
the guitar-ish feel, many tracks also seem to contain animal noises, like
birds, chickens milling in the background. The music has a pleasant innocence
about it, perhaps linking the mood to the title, but by the end of the album
there is a lack of tension or thematic development across the many tracks that
is ultimately its overall weakness.
“Quaking
myth” which originally dates from 2010 is a completely different beast,
however. The first ten minutes sound like gamelan music played in a rain storm
with a Word War II transistor radio playing softly in the background, a kind of
tropical Java heat slowed to a crawl and trapped in a beautiful loop. The second
track on the first side sounds at first like a harmonium drone fest or some of
Charlamagne Palestine’s strumming music. The sound could be a crystal storm
cloud gathering in to itself purple dusk hues as it condenses and sets down
over a small town. But there is no disaster on touch down, only a soft blurring
as the cloudiness becomes night and the threat merges into the quotidian
activities of man, as captured in the field recordings. The second side opens
with a phasing set of chords not unlike some of the moments from Popol Vuh’s
soundtrack to Aguirre (which seems appropriate given the label!), particularly
the metaphorical scenes of raging rapids, before it eventually slipping into a
more languid drift work for just over 13 minutes. The album ends in a short
vignette of a rusty gate come loose and grinding in the hot summer breeze
before it too fades into silence, as if time has swept clean the farm and the
jungle of all life and only the structures remain to crumble slowly.
Black Swan
– Redemption [Ethereal Symphony, 2013]
“More
drones for bleeding hearts.” The Black Swan returns with a limited edition CDr
on Ethereal Symphony. Don’t let the near-white cover fool you though, this
isn’t a feel-good album and the hooded figure on the cover isn’t any druid or guardian
angel. The gloomy track titles will probably give it away before you even get
to the music, but just in case, the disc inside is a Black-on-Black, with the
first 17 copies including a one-of-a-kind, antique funeral invitation! As with
previous efforts by the mysterious artist, the beginning and end of the album
are particularly poignant. Here, the opening is a quiet and grainy build before
suddenly exploding into an old cinema soundtrack. But the dramatic and
nostalgic atmosphere gives way to moody and suspenseful drones, always with the
feeling that something worse is about to happen. If there was any theme to the
album it might be the dying light of a Hollywood star given the distinct
opening and the central track “Fading glory” which returns once more to a film
music feel. The rest of the album is a bleak and blurry drone soundtrack to an
inescapable downfall that has to be resisted with a maximum of dignity and
grace albeit with a relentless sense of futility. “Desperation” lives up to its
name, turning a fuzzy, but hopeful symphonic swirl into a cathartic and
hopeless mess of noise by the end. The long track “Atonement” surges like an
inner spirit trying to purge itself and having a metallic production it feels
like a kind of heavy, aural burden, before fading into the subtle symphonic
sounds of “Inferno”, a kind or ironic logic as if to say that the actual world
is hell, despite all the intense transformation and dramatic emotion in the
music surrounding it. Black Swan saves the best for last, however. “Of Land and
Water” starts by blending a big timpani sound, the first rhythm on the album,
with waves of strings and another Black Swan trademark which is to provide a
sense of longing and regret, and a desire to return to the music, no matter how
dark and bleak it was. The end of every Black Swan album has the sense of death
to it and it is always sad to leave, no matter what.
There is
also a “name your price” Black Swan track available on his Bandcamp page as well if you don’t manage to snag
one of the album copies.
Tuluum
Shimmering - Ulau Tau / Spirit Of The Sun [Aguirre, 2013]
This is Tuluum
Shimmering’s third album this year after
a 46 minute untitled digital release on Blowing Up The Workshop and the
double cassette “Raag Wichikapache / Lake Of Mapang” on Space Slave Editions.
The first side here, presumably “Ulau Tau”, feels like a long lost Pacific
Tribe meeting Dolphins Into The Future. It is landlocked music, but one that
pays homage to the nearby waves. It could be Hawaii with a tinkling piano
imitating a ukelele. There’s also enough shells, congs and bells to feel closer
to Tahiti or the South Pacific. Press notes say that it is a “homemade bamboo xylophone, homemade flute, acoustic guitar
customised with buzz bridge, Roland digital piano, vietnamese gong, cymbal,
rattle.” The fact that it may have been made in rainy England beggars belief.
It is nonetheless a brilliant beach holiday mantra, a soundtrack for endless
cocktails, for wind and sand sunset lounges, breeze in the hair and the palms
swaying above. Over on the second side, the balance is quite different. The
flutes are still there and the piano still twinkles in the background, but with
a bluesier feel. The most notable addition is the drums, big toms toms buried
deep in the mix and a twanging drone that moves in and out of focus. Its hard
to know if the second side feels more religious or more like a soundtrack to a
desert road movie. Tahiti feels closer to India here, though its hard to tell
as the drugs had already kicked in sometime on the first side, or maybe it was
just all those tequila sunrises sipped on the long white beach? In any case,
this a mantric and very pleasing album for losing time and transporting yourself
to another place.
Kevin Drumm – Imperial Distortion [Hospital
Productions, 2008/2013]
There is not much more that needs to be
said about this album it seems. Anyone curious for a background could do worse
than head over to FACT Mag where
there is a primer as well as a historical context of the album that has just
been re-released on vinyl. I must confess to being a bit uneasy about buying it
based on a few Boomkat samples, especially after ending up with the re-issue of
Drumm’s eponymous first album on Thin Wrist Recordings from 2010 which remains
lovingly packaged, but hardly played on my shelf somewhere. “Imperial
Distortion” is something else altogether though. It truly is a masterpiece, but
one that is most definitely not for the iPod generation. To have any kind of
experience with this album requires proper speakers and preferably a decent
sized room for moving through. My first listen to this in such conditions
nearly made me sick, but in a good way. The depth in the sound was simply
staggering. The bass at times was cavernous, a cliché word for ambient, but in
this case there is nothing else apt. The six sprawling tacks here are like
flying at a steady height over black canyons whose bottom plummets away and
then rises again to sea level, all in the darkness. There is a brooding and
frightening presence in this lightless space, a presence which only makes
itself felt at the end when the album closes in a crunching deluge of noise
lasting only a few paltry minutes compared to the endless and timeless void
that is the album proper. Ever since getting hold of this I have been trying to
create for myself time and space to listen to it as it defies to be wallpaper
music and requires activity and response. But its epic length, much like the
Swans “Seer” album from last year, is a difficult barrier for an all-in-one
session, yet it with six sides to choose from it can be assembled and
reassembled at will. Any comparison with Aphex Twin you may have read is
garbage, at least sonically, although it will be easy to hold this work up in
the same high regard in half a century’s time. This is an album with profound
impact and an extensive range. Finally, it is worth pointing out as well the
poignancy of the cover image too. The front features a few plastic bottles in a
dirty river in colour, like a modern version of Monet’s “Waterlillies”, while
the inside features a World War II battle scene underway in black and white.
There is hardly a word anywhere to be seen. Somehow this reflects the floating
world within: society, mankind has become a dirty river burdened with pollution
and consumerist flotsam and jetsam, while inside we harbour war. I remember a
trip to Egypt several years ago and walking in a village suburb in Luxor and
seeing such scenes. The once beautiful Nile, cradle of civilisation, choked
with plastic Coke bottles.
Sleeper – From beyond [Room 40/A Guide to
Saints, 2013]
With Moths – For silence [Room 40/A Guide
to Saints, 2013]
Lawrence English’s Room 40 cassette
sublabel A Guide to Saints has unleashed a second batch of relases for July
2013. Amongst them are a couple of New Zealand artists, including Sleeper (C.J
Parahi) and With Moths. The former’s album “From beyond” features anywhere from
two to four long tracks with different atmospheres. At least the press notes
tell me there is four and each side has two names, but there is no discernible
join between the two on each side. On side 2 “Edge of darkness”/“Creeper” is
dark enough to bring it into the same sort of terrain as Kevin Drumm’s
“Imperial Distortion” (see elsewhere) and is like an Industrial dreamscape,
with grating fluorescent lights panning across landscapes etched from blackness
and coloured in clotted smoke. There is a comfort in feeling at least the music
might come from another room and is not really inside your head. The A side
couldn’t begin any differently, however, and appears to be an ironic joke. The
opening minute is like the soundtrack to some kitsch Celtic movie although it is
quickly drowned in a deep pool along with the whole film. Time then becomes
stretched and the scenes drag as they play it, struggling against the weight of
water. It is beautiful without being blissful, like watching your life play out
before your eyes while drowning.
With Moths album “For silence” may or may
not have a reference to the Flying Saucer Attack track of the same name from
the “Further” album [1994] who were certainly something of a hit in New
Zealand, as they were in Australia. After all, they also released their
impressive live album “In search of spaces” on Bruce Russel's Corpus Hermeticum
and appeared on the “Harmony of the Sheres” boxset alongside one of the space
rock idols of the time Roy Montgomery. Certainly there are some similarities
with the FSA sound, to a point. The vocals that first appear on “Living the
wait” bear more than a resemblance to Dave Pearce on FSA, being slightly
tuneless and drowned in reverb and effects. There are also echoey low fi
guitars too, but much less cathartic than the FSA sound. If anything, there is
more of a touch of the Cure than FSA, with guitar feedback replaced by hazy
synth drones and a certain psychedelic eastern feel from “Killing an Arab”.
Seaworthy
and Taylor Deupree – Wood, Wnter, Hollow [12K, 2013]
More from
the antipodes with Seaworthy, the electro-acoustic post-rock group of Cameron
Webb (on this recording without Greg Bird and Sam Shinazzi) who is normally based
in Sydney, Australia and his team-up with 12K head honcho Taylor Deupree. Here
the emphasis is on the landscape as muse rather than as audio form. That is,
this isn’t a soundscape, but a reaction to one played out on guitars, chimes
and layers of synth and over field recordings. For inspiration, Webb and
Deupree spent several days wondering through the snowy Ward Pound Ridge reserve
a little to the north of New York recording the frozen rivers, wind, footsteps
in snow and absorbing the site of white hills and wounded trees, damaged in the
wake of Hurricane Sandy. Two of the tracks bear dates, February 21 and 22 from
this year as a kind of audio diary and are the closest to an actual soundscape.
But the emphasis of the album is on the three longer tracks “Wood”, “Winter”
and “Hollow” which give the album its name. These tracks are essentially jams
without riffs and hooks, just picked guitar, flutters of echo, the fading of
notes and the forgotten promise of melodic progression. At times there is a
strange lack of space as all the sounds compete for an audible middle ground,
but in other moments there is a much greater sense of profundity, with the
field recordings interacting more with the notes, or where the second guitar or
the electronics comes more to the fore. There is a melancholy emotion running
through the work, but sometimes it feels slightly muted, given its bleak source
of inspiration and its sparse arrangements. “Hollow” is perhaps the richest
track emotionally, with the long amble of “Winter” lacking another instrument
to accompany the long haul to really emphasise its purpose. But this is an
album for focusing and defocusing in slow motion, where the impression given by
the purity of the recording and the tonality of the playing is as important as
any invented emotion embellished on its surface. Here, the winter landscape is
more like a mask or a mirror than its own voice.
Frozen
thoughts – Calm before the storm [Glacial Movements, 2013]
More winter
music in the heart of summer (at least in the northern hemisphere)! There has
been a lot of movement at Glacial movements (sic) in the last few months. Not
only has there been a digital album by Japanese artists Yuya Ota (more from him
in our special Japanese ambient show coming up soon), but a new collaboration
between Bvdub and Locsil as well as CD albums by Aida Baker and label boss Alessandro
Tedeschi aka Netherworld. Somewhere in between all this was also Frozen Thoughts
aka Petar Šakić and another digital album “Calm before the storm”.
Geographically at least, there seems a long way between the Croatian capital
Zagreb from where Šakić originates and the frozen tundra he evokes, although
there are plenty of mountains nearby and one assumes this at least provided
some of the inspiration. Here the album is divided in five long tracks for
immersive listening with intermissions between the tracks of someone walking
through the snow and environmental noises like wind and birds. The album is
thus a kind of fantasy travelogue, with each track feeling like a chapter in
the story. It is quite a dark tale, however, with all tracks playing off a
brooding, isolationist feel with the exception of “Godlight” which feels almost
a bit too bright and up-beat at times. But there are plenty of good ideas on
the rest of the album, from the bleepy chimes opening “We are not alone” as if
an ancient alien beacon had been discovered beneath the ice, whereas
“Reflections of dead maidens” and “Eternity without time” are both exceptional
portals to beautifully resonant inner space. Finally, the title track which
closes the album does not betray and concludes the tranquility in a blizzard of
granular noise and distant shrieks.
Mousecop –
Greatest hits volume 2 [Rubber City Noise, 2013]
The first
couple of minutes of Mousecop’s Greatest hits might not suggest an album that
lives up to its titles. It’s all pretty goofy and standard low fi stuff, with
growly vocals and dirty electronics, the kind of music your parents are always
telling you “I could do that,” only this time they might be right. However,
somewhere near the end of the first track, things start to get weirder and out
of control. It sounds for awhile like C3PO and R2D2 are coming up on acid just
as the Millennium Falcon starts lurching into hyperspace before touching down
in a granular mess on Tatooine. From there onwards “Greatest hits volume 2” is
a less predictable and more involving, combining gritty noise with a vast array
of more palatable sounds and a collage approach to arrangements and some nice
sequencing that joins it all together. The second track “Moldar encounters a
dark spirit in the woods, Skully is skeptical though” briefly alludes to the
X-files theme before diverting to a whacked out preacher intoning over a wash
of noise. The third track is a country-like guitar jam reminiscent of Sunburned
Hand of the Man or other New Weird American sounds that becomes a hazy
backwards drawl as it closes. Things get weirder still with the fourth track
with a constant rhythm of heavy breathing overlaid with a sprinkling of
abrasive sounds and heavy noises as if the respiration were under attack. Somewhere
towards the end you can hear a “real” band playing in the next room. The
closing track “Where the shook window offers no respite” begins like a quiet,
narrative story full of disembodied voices in detached locations. Not entirely
satisfying, but full of humour and chaotic invention.
Billy
Gomberg – False heat [False, 2013]
This is a minimal release if ever there was one
from rooklyn.based sound artist Billy Gomberg. The whole recording sounds
somehow frail, withered and almost half in and out of existence. I mean that in
a good way. It takes about 12 minutes for the first side/track to almost
register on the consciousness and then it sort of sits as a wavering, sickly
line. The second side begins with a more corporal presence, contrasting the
trajectory of different drones to form hypnotic overlays, like much of Éliane
Radigue’s work. By the end it thickens into a heavier, eastern-sounding hum,
but like the first side, the changes are almost invisible and the sense of time
is marvelously distorted.
Number
|
Artist
|
Track
|
Label
|
Year
|
1
|
Frozen Thoughts
|
Eternity without time
|
Glacial Movements
|
2013
|
2
|
Sleeper
|
Edge of darkness
|
A Guide to Saints
|
2013
|
3
|
Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree
|
Cloister
|
12K
|
2013
|
4
|
Aquarelle
|
Sand paper winds
|
Students of Decay
|
2013
|
5
|
Tuluum Shimmering
|
Ulau Tau
|
Aguirre Records
|
2013
|
6
|
Xiphiidae
|
Quaking myth side B
|
Aguirre Records
|
2013
|
7
|
Bvdub
|
Waiting for a friend
|
AY
|
2013
|
8
|
Black Swan
|
Of Land and water
|
Ethereal Symphony
|
2013
|
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