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Topic Review (Newest First)
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| Jun 20th, 2006 12:12 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
spektr - the near death experience http://www.sendspace.com/file/thcvba There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like. This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane. The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too. A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record! The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing. -Aquarius Records |
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| Jun 12th, 2006 10:41 AM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: black boned angel - heavens blaze forth the death of princes http://www.sendspace.com/file/k2evp8 "This was a limited-edition tour only CD-R made for BBA's European tour and Instal festival appearence during 2005. Comes in the usual Battlecruiser style handmade packaging. One monolithic track coming to an hour in length! The beginning sounds like a riff from Sleep's Jerusalem slowed to a snail's pace and stretched into infinity. 15 minutes in comes those textbook BBA storm detonations that make the whole thing heavy as fuck to the point of speaker damage. Incredible!" klaus wiese - gnosis http://www.sendspace.com/file/srsv8x warm, organic drone with a slightly middle eastern vibe. nigga' used to play with fucking popul vuh! the tunnel singer - water birth http://www.sendspace.com/file/3caknc "You say you admire the simple beauty of the female voice wordlessly singing? You say you're tired of crazy beats and wacky special effects processing? Well then, The Tunnel Singer has something just for you. Water Birth delivers lyric-free, a cappella songs whose amazing resonations naturally occur due to their recording environment, which is where Lee Ellen Shoemaker gets her "stage name"... Instinctively drawn to especially acoustic areas, she unleashes her voice into these reverberant spaces, singing into cisterns, stairwells, parking garages and of course, tunnels. This disc was recorded live in a 2,000,000-gallon underground water tank ("the Cistern Chapel") which creates a 45-second reverberation as Shoemaker's voice echoes and re-echoes amongst eighty-eight roof support pillars, and returns softly diffused. Subtle textures are added by other locational occurences during recording, including falling grains of sand, water droplets, bird songs and droning planes and insects. The long, enchanting reverberation is natural and has not been electronically enhanced. " robert opalio - the last night of the angel of glass http://www.sendspace.com/file/s9ccu6 "Consisting of Roberto’s wordless vocal chants and celestial guitar drones, The Last Night of the Angel of Glass is a sparse recording. It starts off with the vocals dominating the sound as they oscillate and echo off of each other creating a hypnotic effect. More and more layers of dissonant vocals are spliced up and piled on top of each other til about the ten-minute mark when they drop out leaving a throbbing drone. As this second section of the piece progresses more vocals are added but unlike the first section the dissonance is resolved for a moment and results in the most beautiful section of the piece. For the second half of the piece the vocals are mostly non-existent and in their place there are more dissonant sonar pings over the top of the same pulsing drone that appeared around the ten-minute mark. This pulsing drone eventually fades out and the album closes with the cosmic bleeps of Roberto’s guitar." and here's some leaks... Xiu Xiu - The Air Force http://www.sendspace.com/file/5lm4gi Thom Yorke - The Eraser http://www.sendspace.com/file/8kwbmq Six Organs Of Admittance - The Sun Awakens http://www.sendspace.com/file/3yjdxj Johnny Cash - Personal File http://www.sendspace.com/file/jzv2fe |
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| May 2nd, 2006 05:46 PM | ||
| EverythingWillSuck |
Here we go: S.O.B - Leave me alone http://download.yousendit.com/9893FEF9460827A6 Thrashcore/grind from Japan. These guys did a split with Napalm Death I believe. |
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| Apr 30th, 2006 02:08 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: bump to remind me to upload some stuff sometime this week. |
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| Mar 29th, 2006 03:50 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: i've been uploading lots of black metal for some homies at another board. here they are... grab 'em fast! eikenskaden - the last dance hxxp://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3D9D4WM82TJRZ3JH5FHTBTUTUI "We were totally bowled over by the brilliance of the first album by Eikenskaden (reviewed in issue #9), the so-called side project of Mystic Forest's Stéfan Kozak. Arty and weird and stunningly original, we looked forward to more, and more we have received. The Last Dance is creativity within what is accepted in the black metal spectrum. Uniquely caustic and impassionate, the blistering fuzz of the fucked production is sliced through by clean piano melodies. As ever, the feeling of angst and sadness are the main players, be it during the manic, melodic, wall-of-noise riffs backed by relentless drumming to the more relaxed, piano segments with spoken parts that remind us of a scene in a French movie where the main character is depressed and reflecting on his life and loves. Some relatively minor but important stylistic changes have been made, the most prominent of which are the vocals. For one, it seems that someone has really been enjoying De Misteriis Dom Sathanas lately. The Last Dance's vocals have also been greatly turned down in a way that make them stick to the melodies from the guitars and bass, making them more of a layer in the maelstrom of sound rather than an element to ride above it all. The constant explosions caused by the mere playing of a guitar string or the hitting of any part of the drum kit found on the first record have also been turned down, which could be considered as a good or bad thing. While it's tough to say that The Last Dance is better than The Black Laments Symphony (the first record), it is certainly on par. The Black Laments… is more experimental and bizarre, but in a way that turns out is all too similar to the first two works of Mystic Forest's. As promised in the interview with Kozak in issue #12, Eikenskaden is beginning to move in a separate direction from Mystic Forest (I'll give you an advance tip to tell you that the next, yet unreleased Eikenskaden's style is even more removed from the main band). Be sure to get this and anything else by this one-of-a-kind French genius." -Roberto Martinelli nokturnal mortum - nechrist hxxp://s41.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=19M1KDWPMA9LT074BKJYHHZHR7 "Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw!" -Aquarius Records drudkh - forgotten legends hxxp://s50.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0QZRZ1ZG48HYI3RVIXGHX85SSO "Hypnotic, majestic and raw are the adjectives I find best suited to describe Drudkh's debut record. This Ukranian act can rightfully claim to have turned the crushing powers of nature into music. Imagine yourself on top of a barren cliff, watching the untameable waves of a tumultuous ocean crushing into it over and over, day after day; feel the ice-cold spray freezing on your face, the vibrations of the impact reaching your feet through the mass of stone until it finally crumbles; and you might get an idea which kind of images songs like "Forests in Fire and Gold" are evoking. In a very general sense, Primordial or Amon Amarth are exploring remotely similar territory while coming from totally different angles, but neither of them has been avoiding the cheese-factor which is often imminent in Pagan or Viking metal so completely and ventured as far into underground black metal and Burzum-esque territory as this Ukranian act. While others feel the need for a certain pompousness in their music and "we're Pagan warriors and come back to take what once was ours" lyrics and imagery, Drudkh's approach is stripped down, droning, hypnotic, and, while relying on proven concepts, original in its execution. With two Hate Forest members in their ranks it's not really surprising that there are certain similarities between the two bands, but overall Drudkh sound less dissonant, more melodic and less sterile, which is also due to a more natural sounding production, especially as far as the drumming is concerned. This is an awesome debut record which is highly recommended not only to fans of obscure underground material but also those who look for emotional, raw and violent music devoid of keyboards and acoustic sections somewhere in between black, Pagan and Viking metal." -Matthias Noll |
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| Mar 26th, 2006 06:07 PM | ||
| MetalMilitia |
I really like the 'Fires where shot' album. It's similarly ambient to the Harvestman but without with bagpipe tacks, which annoyed me. Great to listen to at night. |
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| Mar 22nd, 2006 12:47 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: Fires Were Shot - Solace h!!p://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1V14BA50WOWOI1OWMRD7JEKXU1 "Fires Were Shot are an experimental guitar duo hailing from Austin, Texas. At once contemplative, haunting and disheveled, the band's second release, Solace, continues to set for th the abyssal, effected acoustic guitar sounds found on their debut release, Form the Hearth, self-released on the band's own Its Only Me imprint in 1998. Solace is a collection of complex emotions, warm guitar tones, and sculpted noise. Each genre-defying song contains image-evoking soundscapes, guitar melodies, and has the gritty quality of spontaneous performance. This is not drone, electronic, or ambient; it is very analog, very experimental, and extremely cinematic, evoking the arid geography of the band's southwest Texas home. Featuring the talents of guitarists John Wilkins and Clay Walton, Fires Were Shot have been compared to everyone from Windy and Carl to Roy Montgomery and most appropriately, Austin neighbors Stars of the Lid." -forcedexposure.com "Drone. Strictly speaking, it's a musical figure, a vaguely defined chunk of vocabulary that musicians use to fill up their minutes. Then again, so is a riff, but the two are usually in different spheres -- one quasi-religious, the other material, sometimes separated by as much as an echo/delay pedal or an e-bow. Long, sustained tones make for a trance-like listening experience and dry riffage makes you pump your fists. If you're doubting any part of this equation, especially that first part, then FiRES WERE SHOT have a record for you. Solace is much more than a collection of long, sustained tones, and usually a step sideways from indie acts who use the template to help listeners bliss out (like Windy and Carl) or to send them into an agitated trance (like Stars of the Lid, who share FiRES WERE SHOT's hometown of Austin, Texas). For starters, almost all of the tracks here (with the notable exception of the nineteen-minute, loop-based wanderer "Ocean M31") come in under three minutes, which gives FiRES WERE SHOT exactly enough time to spin their delicate web of guitar figures, constantly, carefully shifting overtones and other unearthly sounds before the mellowness of it all sends you off to an astral plane (in other words, to sleep). Each track is like a brief look at the sky -- filled with all sorts of different textures, constantly mutating, beautiful without pushing any agendas, sporting a surprise shape or color every once in a while. "Aside Herself" starts the record off with a modest pre-dawn meditation, and "Quickbeam" thickens things up with a scraped guitar string and the buzzing sound of a dozen violins milking that sweet spot between pitches and overtones of pitches, played by eternal musicians Tony Conrad and La Monte Young. FiRES WERE SHOT are careful not to hypnotize themselves out of existence, though -- "Eierie" breaks the reverie with some muted post-industrial tape noise -- then more chiming guitars enter the mix. Tracks like "Sailene" and "Hollow" are just as specific about the sorts of textures they'll use, and just as precariously balanced between notes and noises, often stretching the former out into the latter with washes of carefully sculpted static and distortion. If a lot of guitars playing the same chord under a wash of reverb isn't enough to get your juices flowing, then Solace's carefully designed world of sound, which straddles the traditionally pretty and the engagingly abstract, might be enough to perk up your ears. Fortunately, the length of its songs and the comparative formal punch each one packs will let you appreciate the beauty before you doze off." -Matt Pierce |
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| Mar 22nd, 2006 12:02 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: Charalambides - Joy Shapes h!!p://s64.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=10F14YY90196S3OJYOOEKMMSQ4 "What is it about the Charalambides that is so affecting? It's nearly impossible to pin down, something that's more conceptual than tangible. Every time I put one of their records on, I always get drawn in and, before I know it, it's an hour later and the record is over. Tom and Christina Carter show that the chemistry married couples often have can translate brilliantly to artistic expression. I don't know them personally, but just listening to how they play off each other musically and how they seem to understand the other's every move, it's a safe bet to say they were meant for each other. Let me not discount new member Heather Leigh Murray's contributions, either. This trio just continues to impress me more and more. The highlight of "Joy Shapes" is the impact that Christina's voice leaves on the listener. She unleashes her pipes on this record in a way I've never heard. It's like a beacon of light shining through a dense foggy maze that their music embodies. Each strained note calls you closer to this wailing siren, except that she does not mean you harm. On the 22 minute epic, "Here, Not Here," she sounds empowered. She opens up over these skeletal arrangements, like a ghost whose soul has finally been freed. I can't stress how moving and unbelievable this is. And she never lets up, either. Just when it sounds like she's quieting down and taking a breath, these reverb-laced sheets of her voice come pouring back over the top of the mix. This entire track has the feel of a battered, decrepit ship sailing through dark, jagged cliffs shrouded in mist. Danger lurks around every corner, but this voice encapsulates everything and is leading the vessel to safety. Every time the track ends, I am sad. I love it when a song does that to me. Musically, this is familiar territory for Charalambides. The Carters' arrangements have always flirted with complexity while staying firmly grounded in minimalism. It's as if the music is emaciated. The intricacy is often below the surface, like underground aquifers providing life to everything that surrounds them. On the title track, Christina Carter's voice is once again the centerpiece. As she moans, "We remembered and smiled when we met," there is something happening that is not only heartbreaking, but also strangely erotic. It's this undercurrent that makes Charalambides so damn good. Listening to this, I'm being stretched in two directions. I want to scream out, "I can't take it! You're tearing me apart!" It's no use, though. I feel like I'm hearing somebody beautifully self-destruct. Laying naked on a sheetless bed, she tries freeing herself of these demons she's been carrying for years. It's of no use, though: they have already won. A half-empty bottle of sleeping pills is spilled on the hardwood floor as she writhes and thrashes, waiting for the poison to take hold. The music is the perfect depiction of the emptiness inside. Never have I heard such an impassioned demise. Fuck, this is brilliant. Halfway through this album, I feel worn out. It's an exhausting listen. Not because it's bad or difficult in any way, but it is so rife with emotion that as the Charalambides explore their inner demons, you are forced to examine your own. Keep that in mind before pressing play, because if you're not up for the task, it's probably best to wait and listen to this another time. Charalambides has an old soul. Like the Carpathian Mountains in Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Dracula, there is something mystifying and enchanting while at the same time completely terrifying. Your curiosity can't be helped. It must journey deep into the heart of this place and find out why, exactly, it is what it is. This is what "Joy Shapes" does. It's the most exposed I've heard a band in a long time. I've also never heard a band so comfortable in such a state. It's as if they're saying, "Yes, this is who we are. This is why we are. What the fuck is it to you?" There's a very vague '70s punk spirit here. "We do what we do and don't care what anyone thinks." Who am I to argue? The results speak for themselves. Fans of their previous work will probably wet themselves when they first hear "Joy Shapes." This takes their already-perfected modus operandi and turns it up to 11. As they go spelunking through their collective psyche, they seem to find a place where each member is comfortable. Hope reigns supreme and blasts through the speakers on the hopeful closer, "Voice for You." If there was ever an appropriately-named song, it is this one. "Joy Shapes" follows the Charalambides on the journey to explain to themselves what they are all about. While the distorted, screaming electric guitar soars toward the heavens as "Voice for You" comes to a close, it is clear this band has it figured it out. It is obvious they have finally found their voice." - Brad Rose "Joy Shapes, pregnant with an intense stasis and nocturnal elegance, is Charalambides’ most intimate offering yet. Five songs hedge a path, which shall take seventy-five minutes to pass through, yet demand frequent visits before unveiling all of its many secrets. Surrounded by Joy Shapes undulating fields, the sight which most arrests are the dynamic and harmonic ranges being battered by Christina Carter’s jarring alto—her elliptical lyrics and insatiable cries being recorded in what Tom Carter could only describe as a “lost evening”. On “Here Not Here”, wordless vocal tone clusters seep out through skeletal arrangements of lap steel, bells, and wood wand, whilst moaning chimes teeter awkwardly, barely keeping balance, their staggering shifts staining the air with uneasiness. Though still rather timid, “Joy Shapes” is the most approachable progeny Charalambides have spawned in some time. Carter exhales a melancholy lullaby with guitar textures slumbering in a soft bed of resonant drones. As the piece sallies on, Tom Carter’s guitar grapples with Murray’s psaltery like a river rolls pebbles. “Natural Night”, meanwhile, adds new colour with brittle chimes crackling like crushed glass, gradually bleeding into dissonance. Carter’s voice looms in the shadows here, adding dimension and tonal possibility. After thirteen minutes of harsh chimes and sharp tones running the length of each other like knives being sharpened, a meek coda of whistling bells feels like crawling into a melodic duvet. Each of these long, winding musical passages marry disciplined understatement to the sense of a disturbingly naked reality, indeed, they float about their guests like the ghost of Hamlet’s father: a gloomy phantom that communicates without speaking. “Voice For You”, is a reedy lap steel wandering through a labyrinth of long squealing tones, with gritty electric guitar reverberating overhead like a rock waiting to fall. Amid Carter’s a cappella, which shifts into a poignant banshee wail, lovely chance occurrences of displacement and empty space are stumbled upon and lend the proceedings an air of spontaneity. Carter’s voice, which sounds like an instrument being tortured, is slowly treated so that it washes into the whirling tones and cacophonic scrapes which carry the album to its end. If there is something alien about Joy Shapes it is not in the face of the otherworldly, but directly in the face of this world—the mood similar to the existentialism of Sartre or Camus, as they stumble before the alien image of what they are. A milestone in the quest for insightful rapprochement between composition and improvisation, Joy Shapes is an incredibly opulent and worryingly irresistible album indeed." -Max Schaefer |
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| Mar 22nd, 2006 05:12 AM | ||
| sloth |
h##p://s65.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=18LL8RQSEX7DH01VOYJYP8YV5J HIS DIVINE GRACE - DIE SCHLANGENKOENIGIN "HDG's second LP on HR! is a dark and gloomy journey into Ernst Jünger's Marina. "Die Schlangenkönigin" is the heroic defeatism of the Marble Cliffs put to ten ambient hymns of conscious desolation and proud despair. More accessible and emotional than his other releases." - treue um treue That Whitehouse album is crushing. I'd only heard wriggle off birdseed and was meaning to get more. They must be something to see live. |
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| Mar 17th, 2006 06:30 PM | ||
| EverythingWillSuck | I might upload Electro Hippies later tonight if I get the chance. Hardcore band Jeff Walker was in pre-Carcass... | |
| Mar 17th, 2006 09:54 AM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: where's everyone else's YSI's? my computer that i use for downloading is currently infected with a virus and i'm too busy/lazy to fix it until my work-week is over so that's why i've been out lately. i guess i could put some stuff on this computer and YSI if i get the chance today. either way, i'm disappointed in the lack of action lately! |
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| Mar 12th, 2006 12:01 PM | ||
| MetalMilitia | It almost reminds me of speedcore - you know there is music there somewhere but it is vailed behind a wall of noise. | |
| Mar 12th, 2006 03:57 AM | ||
| Rez |
WHITEHOUSE - ASCETICISTS 2006 http://s26.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...327S2JG3RH5JMH i can't imagine anyone who appreciates emotional extremity in music not liking this. it's brutal, explicit, dehumanizing, sounds fucking amazing, and you have a dictatorial william bennet shouting at you over that noise and those drums for 29 minutes. IT'S FUCKING GREAT. |
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| Mar 6th, 2006 07:51 PM | ||
| MetalMilitia |
Harvestman is awsome. Im not to sure about the bagpipes because I don't really like bagpipes anyway but the rest of the album is great. As I keep saying - I will upload something soon 
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| Mar 4th, 2006 05:22 PM | ||
| EverythingWillSuck |
I'm downloading Harvestman right now. By the description it looks pretty good. I like this idea. I have a bunch of albums and such myself that I'd post a list of, but I'm not on my own computer right now. Probably later today. |
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| Mar 3rd, 2006 09:26 AM | ||
| sloth |
h##p://s56.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3EMKXFID50YF42R51IG3R8PDGB HARVESTMAN - LASHING THE RYE "Long known for blazing scorching psychedelic guitar trails in the heavy music realm with Neurosis, Steve Von Till now turns his attention to the world of more straightforward psychedelic rock guitar. Lashing The Rye is the first record from Steve under his new pseudonym Harvestman, and an impressive debut it is! Hung upon the framework of traditional music and mixed with a liberal dose of the subtle sounds and textures that we've come to recognize as distinctly `Neurot' in tenor, this is a new window on the inner workings of Von Till's psyche...or at least some of what goes on in his private studio late at night." - southern.com h##p://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2BPZ9K5D0EQDC14WF7KGJDRVAA GINNUNGAGAP - REMEINDRE "Wishing to forego the amplifier worship of previous projects, the trio set about using acoustic instruments to create a meditative and different kind of "heavy" musical landscape filled with the drone of traditional Indian Harmonium, Tamboura and Sruti Box alongside bowed and plucked guitars and layers of wordless voice. The resulting four compositions are powerful, reflective and extremely beautiful. The inspiration for this session came from the soundtrack work of Popul Vuh for the films of Werner Herzog and Alejandro Jodorowsky's collaborative music for his films from the early 70's along with more modern artists like Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance and Jack Rose's Pelt." - southern.com |
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| Mar 2nd, 2006 02:39 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: i had some requests. here they be... Joe Meek & The Blue Men - I Hear A New World h!!p://s42.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=26FKUOTWKF91F15YBV45DF3RMY "Recorded in 1960 and then lost until 1991, Joe Meek and The Blue Men's, I Hear a New World was arguably the first concept album of its kind, delivering musical answers to questions about the final frontier. Essentially this album was written about a sonic journey into space 10 years before humans landed on the moon. Lets put this in the context of the era: 1960 and space? People still had concepts of planets made of cheese and little green men with glass helmets wandering about (feasting on human Flesh and wailing on short-necked guitars). "I wanted to create a picture in music of what could be up there in outer space," Meek said in an interview. A nontraditional artist in every sense, Joe Meek was a producer who didn't play or sing on this or any other album. He was also a deeply troubled man. Meek suffered from depression and paranoia and was known for explosive tantrums. A closeted homosexual, Meek was once arrested for soliciting for "immoral" purposes after he apparently made a pass at an undercover policeman in an era when public scorn, fear and anger buried homosexuals under social taboos and criminal law. But Meek's swirling, unpredictable emotions seemed to contribute to his creativity. Thought of as somewhat of a studio mad scientist, he became a legend for experimenting with stereo technology and with any effects he could conjure up. Meek was making British rock history before the "invasion," years before The Beatles would even release an album. Mostly instrumental, a New World contains songs about waterfalls on the moon and gatherings of dancing aliens. The sped-up Martian lyrics can only be compared today with songs by Alvin and The Chipmunks or perhaps the Lollipop Guild from The Wizard of Oz; cheesy by today's standards, but pretty cutting edge for the time. "Yes! This is a strange record,'' Meeksaid. "I meant it to be." The album landed in the wasteland outside pop culture, failing Meek's attempts to market it as a demo album for stereo equipment salespeople. In the next few years Meek's life began to unravel. Then, in Feburary, 1967, he fatally shot himself in the head after shooting his landlady in the back. I Hear A New World vanished after Meek's suicide. Thirty years later, RPM records picked it up and released it in its entirety . Is I Hear a New World a piece of musical history? The brain child of a genius, a madman? If Meek's work can be resurrected, understood, even inherited, modern DJs, swimming through stacks of obscure records, will be the artists who do it." -Shane Stornanti "It has been said that when Joe released what was designed simply to be a sampler EP of four of this albums tracks, that only 99 copies were ever produced. It seems more likely however, that only 99 copies were ever actually sold. Various problems Joe had with his distributors and finances ensured that the full length 'I Hear A New World' LP was permanently shelved. Well, until years after Joe's death, of course. The years passed, and 'I Hear A New World' acquired something of a lengendary status, particularly amongst techno/electronica artists. Indeed, 'I Hear A New World' comes across as a particularly exotic and out of this world electronica LP. Albeit one produced and recorded in 1960. And that's where Joe Meek comes into the equation, of course. This was a project very dear to his heart, recordings designed to show the world the full range of his production, composing and recording techniques. Joe's obsession with all things outer-space lended the album its concept, even if his backing band at the time weren't particularly fond of being christened 'the blue men' and being asked to go on stage wearing costumes and asked to have their faces, etc - painted entirely blue! Needless to say, Rod Freeman and The Blue Men, as Joe had indeed christened them for this release, weren't too happy! Anyway, to get the outer space sounds of the moon and beyond that Joe desired, he used a mixture of Hawaiian guitar, bass, drums, a deliberately out of tune piano. He used combs, running water, treated electronics and a wide variety of other percussive and pioneering mixing effects. That little potted history out of the way, what do we make of this album, exactly? How does it come across listened to in the early part of the 21st century? Well, dated in places, of course. That's only to be expected. There is a timeless appeal to the record overall, though. Some of the actual melodies that Joe composed are absolutely beautiful in their haunting simplicity. Joe Meek was tone deaf, by the way. His hummed demos are reputedly absolutely astonishing!! Still, Joe had these sounds in his head, and utilized his studio and musicians brilliantly to bring his imagined sounds into reality. Listening to 'I Hear A New World', i'd say he did a pretty good job! The title track, for example. Treated backing vocals, both the lead vocal and the backing track deliberately out of tune in places. The guitar sound ringing after each "haunting me....." vocal refrain. The sounds produced are unlike sounds you will hear anywhere else. Utterly distinctive and original sounds are all over this LP. There is a reason it is revered. 'Orbit Around The Moon' is actually more typical Meek instrumental fare, a little shuffling thing that sounds less 'outer space' than much of the LP. Well, it sounds like a delicious mix of Country And Western, provided said Country And Western musical combo were actually from Mars and Pluto. Enough said!! 'Magnetic Field' is eerie sound effects, then eerie actual melodies and undescribable sounds. 'Love Dance Of The Saroos' is a particular favourite of mine, the melody utterly delectable. The way the sound is painted around the melody, the way the echo and percussion has been used. It's hard to believe, but it's true that 'Love Dance Of The Saroos' sounds like the kind of material Brian Wilson was producing in 1967 and 1968. Instrumentals that forgoe any kind of basic rock form in favour of reaching truly for the heavens and reaching truly for sounds and places that can only be imagined. So, ambitious? Well, yes. Ambitious, at other times astonishing, at other times scary and other times beautiful and beautifully funny. That's Joe Meeks 'I Hear A New World'. I like it a lot. I'd heard about this record. Until I actually heard it though... well. All I can say is, it's truly unlike anything else i've heard in my entire life. That's a good thing, obviously." -Adrian Denning. --------------------------------------------------------------- Kinski - Alpine Static h!!p://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3D3ZGYQ0O16AO27TKXYNVEZVSQ "Every fan and detractor knows the formula: Kinski alternately cajoles and pummels with warm droney passages and all-out riff-based assaults, sometimes building to climaxes, sometimes launching headlong into them. Last year’s Don’t Climb On and Take the Holy Water, presented under the Herzog moniker, offered a glimpse into some latent orchestrated possibilities, apparent in retrospect on Airs Above your Station but not really that album’s MO. Alpine Static presents a fairly radical shift in group dynamics and deployment, successfully incorporating the sonic wash of Holy Water into the Kinski model while often stretching the boundaries of said model almost to its breaking point. Longtime fans of the trademark sludgy psych needn’t worry, as tracks like “The Party which you Know Will be Heavy” and “Passed Out On your Lawn” thrive on it, and the disc has several of those slow-burn Kinski epics. However, each track presents twists and turns that keep things fresh and exciting through Kinski’s boldest statement to date. After coddling to expectations and preconceptions for several minutes, “Hot Stenographer” suddenly comes to a dissonant halt on a single held note; beyond the guarded fluidity of much ambient drone, this is a frozen moment of clarity before the riffage kicks back in. It is only the first of many such instances on a disc that, more than any Kinski effort so far, thrives on abrupt changes in the sonic landscape. Some of them chart new territory for the band: witness the momentary descent into a rather unsubtle but undeniable Derek Bailey-esque maelstrom on “The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy,” or the relentlessly heavy mindnumbing conclusion to “Stenographer.” Equally poignant but similarly unexpected is a beautifully Frippertronic excursion that closes “Passed Out on your Lawn,” almost inverting the “lull, build, crush” Kinski aesthetic. The inner details exposed in each sound on Holy Water seem to have pervaded Kinski’s compositions, giving them a new freedom and imbuing Alpine Static with an experimental edge that complements the group’s already visceral approach." -Marc Medwin "You probably know this feeling: you're watching one of your favorite bands perform, and they're on fire, nailing every song so perfectly that you wish you'd bootlegged the show. And then, during an extended version of one of their best songs, they hit that "transformational" moment; the hair stands up on the back of your neck, you feel a palpable change in the air around you, and the music becomes a whole order of magnitude more powerful. It's an amazing, blissful, body-tingling moment -- hell, it's one of the reasons we go to shows in the first place. It's also an experience that any Kinski fan should recognize -- the group's live gigs are full of little sonic revelations, though they're hard to capture on record. Here's the good news: Alpine Static features many of those musical epiphanies, and the bits between them are totally respectable as well. Consider opener "Hot Stenographer"; after its minute-long slabs-o'-distortion intro, you'd be forgiven for expecting an airless psych-rock jam rather than the lean, muscular, AC/DC-esque rockout that follows. It's definitely time to haul out the air instruments -- at least until the two guitars lapse into a gently bent B chord that sounds as if it may never end. You've seen this happen at a show: the players hold a single feedback-frosted note as the audience stands, wondering what's coming next. A few people start cautious conversations, and a youngish, cranky-looking female audience member puts her fingers in her ears, and you begin to wonder if the song is over. Then, shortly after you've decided that the song is over, the jam resumes full force, the sheer tightness of its stabbing riffs sending shivers down your spine. That's what "Hot Stenographer" delivers -- pulse-quickening excitement. Losing the classic rock vibe is "The Wives of Artie Shaw"'s first order of business; the bleak, bristling lead-in and elastic chorus jam might well have been borrowed from Sonic Youth's 1990 playbook. The playing is fevered, the pace unrelenting. "Hiding Drugs in the Temple (Part 2)" sprinkles a little noodling action over the Big, Bleak Riffs™; Chris Martin and Matthew Reid-Schwartz work their way from basic call-and-response to a knock-down, drag-out guitar battle as drummer Barrett Wilke reels off thunderous fills in the background. "The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy"'s dual picked melody is almost unnaturally gentle and mannered, implying a massive flare-up in the offing. This time, you get a few minutes' warning -- four measures of strummed chords before the storm, which sounds like huge chunks of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless falling out of the sky into the song. Then, suddenly, the whole thing stops dead -- total silence at first, followed by the sort of near subliminal noises you hear when musicians holding very noisy instruments attempt to be completely quiet. Then, after a few cautious, throat-clearing guitar vocalizations, the song starts up with a new, more urgent melody -- a confident, anthemic bit of three-chord (and later four-chord) business, underscored by howls of feedback, decorated with tightly-fingered patterns. It's a gorgeous denouement, but it isn't enough for Kinski: with two minutes to go it fades to a sunny hum, then mounts a pretty, entirely feedback-free dual-guitar melody for a quintessential indie rock close, pure enough to give you shivers. "Passed Out On Your Lawn" gives bassist Lucy Atkinson a chance to shine: her rhythm layer is a sinister, subharmonic presence beneath the simple, faintly Eastern guitar figure that repeats in the song's opening minutes. When the inevitable loud bit arrives, Atkinson echoes that initial guitar figure while Martin and Reid-Schwartz squall around her, shading in the shadows like a carefully inked sketch. The twist here is that there's a gaping sonic chasm stuck in the middle of this "Lawn", a black hole from which no melody escapes, and only the vaguest swirling sketches of sound reach the other side, full of funereal ambiance. "All Your Kids Have Turned to Static" sustains the newly mellow vibe, pitting Reid-Schwartz's expressive flute against Martin's plaintive finger-picked tune, plus a syrupy layer of... well, it's either keyboard or organ or pedaled-to-hell guitar, but whatever it is, it makes the song feel like a fever dream. In the interest of leaving Alpine Static a few of its surprises, we'll simply note that "The Snowy Parts of Scandinavia" has been a staple of the band's live set for a few years, and offers a few heart-in-mouth shocks amid its feedback-drenched catharsis and Stereolab-friendly jam. "Edge Set" offers more indie rock tingles, and closer "Waka Nusa" pledges itself unquestioningly to a very intimate finale. One of Kinski's great strengths is their willingness to commit to their basic format; although Reid-Schwartz in particular could probably rock any instrument he sets hands on, the band never add extra, eclectic instrumentation simply for the sake of doing so. Indeed, they squeeze so much depth out of their standard, straightforward formula that even the flute can sound oddly stuntish 'til it finds its place in a song. Alpine Static's only disappointment is the fact that drummer Barrett Wilke's powerful rhythms are often stranded in the background; Wilke gives his kit a near-fatal beating over the album's course, and it's a pity that his ferocious fills, so often caught in passing, don't get more chances to dominate. Listen closely to "Passed Out On Your Lawn" to hear him get his workout. Alpine Static celebrates Kinski's near-Tantric knack for finding yet another climax in the midst of their drawn-out, cathartic instrumental shudders. It highlights their talent for finding the core of invention within repetition, and suggests far greater peaks (and much greener valleys) in their future. And as far as recapturing those fleeting concert-going thrills is concerned, it's top-notch." -George Zahora "Maybe Kinski does rely on the loud/soft dynamic quite a lot in their compositions and, frankly, their last album seemed too bent on switching between churning, piston-driven rock and more electronic affairs that simply hummed and drifted away within the record. It was a distracting feature on an otherwise fine album; all that's changed with Alpine Static. The blasted, wailing guitars and metronomic drum performances are still present, but the compositions have more depth to them. Tracks like "The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" pass between thumping, heavy sections and subdued portions that are equally exotic and familiar. The use of atmospheric movements within some of the pieces works much better than previously due to the inclusion of far more organic sounds. When the strings freak out and begin to convulse like a dying animal there's no sense of forced drama or pause, the album flows together as one continuous piece of music. It's pretty amazing feat considering the range of sounds to be found and the fact that a couple of these tracks have been floating around for a little while now in one form or another. Both "Hiding Drugs in the Temple (Part 2)" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" have appeared before in some form or another and with different names. Also refreshing is the dynamic of darker and lighter songs on Alpine Static. My experience with Kinski is that they tend to pick a mood and stick to it, but between different songs and, sometimes, within a given song Kinski switch up the atmosphere and spirit easily and seamlessly. There's no shortage of very serious rocking, but the best parts of the album are when they manage to build a real tension and then release it perfectly with a wave of drumming fury and infinitely stretched guitar tones that each something like pure noise feedback. They control it just enough to give it a melodic edge that makes it captivating. Alpine Static is a huge improvement on their past albums, mainly because I want to listen to the entire record instead of skipping around and looking for the aggressive, propulsive songs on the album and leaving the rest to sit as filler. Every portion of the album is used more economically and satisfyingly, making it a more enjoyable listen and a more well- rounded piece of music all the way around." -Lucas Schleicher |
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| Mar 2nd, 2006 12:40 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: Orthrelm - Ov h!!p://s65.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0Z6PE1JA553G41ATM3DL20TKVN "There’s a brief passage in the John Fahey story “The Center of Interest Will Not Hold” that always comes to mind when I think of the best way to describe the inviting and, in its finest moments, intoxicating methods of minimalist composition. It’s a description of Fahey seeing Hank Williams perform on a Potomac River excursion boat back in 1953, and it goes like this: “And then he started playing, not singing, ‘My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,’ a 12-bar blues in E. And he played it and played it over and over again. For about 10 minutes. Then he started singing. But when he did sing he only sang a few verses and then he came to an abrupt halt. It was so incredibly surprising and intense that it was frightening. After he stopped there was a silence for a long time. We were all hypnotized.” I would not be surprised in the least to find out Mick Barr and Josh Blair, the respective guitarist and drummer of Orthrelm, knew the Fahey passage (taken from the must-own book How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life) by heart. On the duo’s blistering, one-song epic OV, everything hinges on the way patterns and repetitions can lull a listener into submission and then pull the rug from beneath them, only to seduce them into another series of patterns and repetitions. At first blush, the record — all 45 minutes of it — is a dense and impassable jungle of droning and clattering and rolling noise. But repeated listens reveal alarming depths and a manner of composition that, like the pen-and-ink maze scribbled alongside the handwritten liner notes inside OV, is frighteningly complex in its simplicity. The record isn’t so much a 45-minute composition as a series of performance segments with a massive, 17-minute introduction. During that lengthy but tightly scripted intro, the band does everything to dissuade the meek or unwilling or uninitiated from journeying further within, throwing seemingly endless loops of fingernail-on-chalkboard guitar shrieks over rumbling, kick-drum-crazed, warp-speed percussion. No bass, no voice, no verse, no chorus, no escape — this is an atypical mass of thunderous rock adrenaline, and Orthrelm wants to make sure you’re ready for the ride. Around the 17:40-mark, it’s meltdown time, the drums abruptly peeling back for a machine-gun slash and burn over a single guitar string. The moment really lasts only a few seconds — a blink of the eye given the length of the entire recording — but it carries a momentum and a punch that shifts the force of the whole damned record, like a planet being thrown out of its numbing rotations around the sun. The loops and clattering passages continue in a series of right-to-the-gut bursts and expansive drones, but there’s a more organic pace to them, a sense that the musicians are in control of the noise (and not vice versa) and they’ve now completely trapped the listener in the proceedings. At 19:45, the shrieking treble-heavy patterns are buttressed, on every fourth and then third note, by the crunch of a power chord that could force the Steve Albini of Shellac’s At Action Park to crack a smile. Before we hit 22:00, there’s the repeated hit of an open note and then a full breakdown, a roll of almost-tribal tom hits interrupted sporadically by a hammered four-note Space Invaders measure. At 23:05, everything erupts again and we’re back into the shrieking repetitions. At 23:30, your wonder how the duo can hammer out the refrains without their fingers spontaneously bursting into flames. By 24:30, the borderline furious and nearly frenetic 4/4 march speeds up to the point where it’s hard to tell if Barr — his guitar now almost echoing the avant-rock/metal tones of David Pajo on Tweez — is even plucking out notes with a guitar pick or just madly sliding his fingers all over the frets, whatever it takes to get that viscous delivery. The record continues unfolding with these bizarrely dramatic moments and passages to its closing hurrah (the curtain drops with a bang, not a whimper, and is trailed only by about eight seconds of deathly silence), but the point of diagramming only a few of them illustrates their alarming impact. This is a difficult record, no question about it, and even those open to structurally challenging rock/metal noise (a la Don Cab or much of the Ipecac catalog) might be turned off by the commitment one has to make before the band delivers the release to that epic practice of tension-building. It would be unfair, ridiculous, and even blasphemous to say Orthrelm is in a league with Fahey or the Hank Williams that Fahey envisions/recalls/constructs in “The Center of Interest Will Not Hold.” But when it comes to that passage, they definitely get it. And your ears will be all the better for tuning in. It’s hypnotism time." -Justin Vellucci "D.C.-based duo Orthrelm (Mick Barr on guitar and Josh Blair on drums) has never fit the mold of, say, Lightning Bolt or Ruins (or even Ui!). They’ve always had a few too many Derek Bailey records on deck for that, and a few too many Napalm Death ones, too. Their earlier discs featured Barr sounding like an amalgam of Blood Ulmer harmolodics, death metal shred, and spiky Bailey-isms. But on this new full-length – consisting of one 45-minute tune – the band has changed styles considerably. The largest shift is from an all-out avoidance of repetition to a full-on experiment with it. Repetition is what rock is all about, after all. But OV, while played by fellows who clearly have roots in and an affinity for heavy music, isn’t so much about sludge as it is about spasm. Think back to the halcyon days of vinyl, and picture Ride the Lightning or Among the Living. Right in the middle of a crazed guitar solo, with 32nd notes flying, the needle gets stuck in the groove - that’s OV. It’s Orthrelm maxing out minimalism - a kind of trance-thrash. Either that, or it’s the early '90s Melvins on 78 rpm. Blair’s rolling, tuned toms could almost be a sample from some awesome Louis Moholo-Moholo improvisation, were it not for the grinding, motoric repetition. And Barr’s sharp, brittle tone suggests the influence of shred-master metal as well as flinty free improv. Each section includes a number of subtle modulations: change of attack, occasional morphing of tempo, and so forth. And there's no denying the duo’s chemistry – they’re locked in tight to the concept and to each other’s playing (very specific drum patterns cue the section changes, often just modulations of the same repeated lick from Blair). The dynamics and structure of the piece aren’t too surprising or challenging; for the most part, things ratchet up continually, with some occasional cool-downs during the latter third of the disc. The first flareup occurs roughly ¼ of the way in, with some particularly fierce unison playing (almost like some thrashy mutation of the end of Mahavishnu’s “The Noonward Race”). The first major break occurs just shy of OV’s midpoint, sounding almost as if the cage to some aviary is open, unleashing a flock of mad birds. From there, however, things slow down, air out, and the duo almost trade licks, which assume an increasingly Middle Eastern flavor, until the big metal moment of the disc’s conclusion. The polar opposite of Sleep’s mighty Dopesmoker, the jittery OV is a 45-minute mindfuck. It’s almost like the end is beside the point: you get the feeling that no matter when, you could check in on Orthrelm and they’d still be wailing and hacking away at this material. It’s a pretty intense ride." -Jason Bivins "Orthrelm's OV consists of patterns laid across a giant, horizontal canvas, one after another. Each pattern (or algorithm or gestalt, to use academic terms often applied to minimalist artwork) is small-- perhaps the size of your average metal riff-- and is self-contained. That is, each one relates to nothing outside of itself, and works through a "predictably terminating" process before moving on to the next. Which is still to say, OV is both a blueprint and the final result of a pretty amazing idea: hardcore minimalism in a rock context. Hardcore? Minimalism? This record, which could almost as easily be communicated via a series of 8x10-inch grids containing tiny, elaborate arrangements of points and lines, crosses a whole range of "high art" concepts. In fact, its "rock context" is more dubious than its artsy conceits, raising the question of whether electric guitars have to signify rock, or are capable of something else. Indeed, OV is something else. In any case, isn't minimalism is supposed to be dead? That's what any art critic worth his pretension will tell you-- and has, on and off, for about 35 years-- despite the fact its remnants can be seen in almost every strand of art henceforth. Minimalist visual art happened as a result of simultaneous decisions made in the late 1950s by several young (and almost exclusively white male American) artists reacting against the wildly subjective Abstract Expressionist movement. Abstract expressionist artists like Jackson Pollack were about capturing personal experience or emotion in the purest, visceral sense. That's all well and good-- and sort of punk when you think about it-- but when Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman came along and did the same with broad planes of color and precisely defined geometrical shapes, it started to seem less a quasi-anarchic roar of purpose, and more a quasi-formalist one. So, rather than put forth subjective statements, the successive generation of artists aimed to produce art as object in and of itself, more apt to use mathematical formulas than emotional drive to create their works. This could manifest itself in anything from Sol Le Witt's math-generated sculptures, to Jo Baer's monochrome canvas-work to Dan Flavin's arrangement of neon lights on museum walls. There was a concurrent "movement" in classical music towards minimalism, though unlike in the visual art critical establishment, nobody really made an effort to brand it as such. In the early 60s, La Monte Young, described by Brian Eno as the "grandfather of us all", was writing really slow, really lengthy pieces of chamber music in the serialist tradition (then the dominant strain of modern classical music, serialism is the organization of notes, rhythms, and other musical elements according to numerical formulae)-- perhaps the musical equivalent of painter Robert Ryman's General series of pure white paintings. Young soon moved to working with sine waves and drone performances that could last for days, or longer. However, you can't really release an LP of a weeklong performance, and a more popular, compact strain of minimalism was port forth by Terry Riley, who used tape loops and delay to concoct sprawling, repetitive soundscapes. He completed the landmark In C in 1964, whose concepts led directly to a whole school of repetition-based music from which Steve Reich and Philip Glass (not to mention Neu! and Can) made a killing. Until now, I would never have thought to compare Orthrelm to those musicians. The Washington D.C.-based duo's previous albums-- including an almost inhumanly fragmented, 99-track EP (!) Asristir Vieldriox from 2002-- were models of monolithic non-repetition. Guitarist Mick Barr (formerly of Crom-Tech) and drummer Josh Blair (also of math-jazzers ABCs) specialized in music obviously rooted in metal, but performed as a steady string of ultra-speed riffs and brittle patterns, thrown against each other in Pollack-like collage: no clear linear progression, but when viewed from a distance, as technically impressive as it is chaotic. John Zorn's Naked City is a precedent, as Orthrelm recall the intensity of the fastest hardcore punk, and the virtuosity of the gone-est conservatory shredders-- not to mention being pretty light on their feet. However, if you wanted jams with beats and wailing choruses, you were out of luck; the band played alien etudes, but not necessarily "rawk." But if fans were left wanting something easier to tap along with, the band's latest delivers the goods in spades. OV, containing a single 45-minute composition, makes as good an introduction to putting oneself into a trance as it does to minimalism or instrumental prog. Although recorded over a period of months, the title piece is presented as a single performance, each segment locking into the next, on and on until everything simply stops. And just as I described Orthrelm's prior releases as monolithic, this one threatens to glaze over the eardrums of anyone not particularly fascinated by the prospect of a metal mosaic, massive in size with attention to minute detail. Yet, it is the attention to detail-- the baroque refinery of the individual riffs and drum patterns-- that makes OV more than just an impressive technical feat (or an excruciating bore). As with the additive, metric modulation of Glass (who cribbed his technique from Indian raga) or Reich's rhythmic phasing, Orthrelm somehow makes music more than the sum of its innumerable parts. At the heart of OV are adrenaline and discipline; abandon and meditation. I'm tempted to recommend the album to anyone interested in learning how to meditate; beyond the sheer length and precision of the music, I wonder if Barr and Blair had to put themselves in some kind of Zen state just to record the stuff. As the passages fly by-- beginning with the pounded tritone introduction, to a diced three-note guitar motive and tom-toms cascade, to sections featuring the thrash of cymbals and high-range dissonance alternating with sections where the drums drop out entirely and guitar lands on sustained, sine-like tones-- I look for inter-connections. Unlike traditionally minimalist music, OV's structure follows an "A to B to C" path, rather than the less intrusive (but arguably more subtle) "A1 to A2 to A3" method of Glass and Reich. On this record, each pattern takes on its own identity, seemingly unrelated to anything happened before-- yet, the speed and consistency of attack (Barr's fingers must be robotic) serve to blur the edges of what might otherwise sound disjointed. I'm not sure history's great minimal artists would approve of OV, on the structural grounds I noted above, or due to the fact that Orthrelm's music just seems so, well, big. Of course, Frank Stella's grid-like aluminum paintings were as tall as people, while some of the great single-artist installations of the 60s and 70s could take up entire galleries, so you never know. Ultimately, this record stands as a towering achievement in its own right, regardless the context you visualize. And maybe this many words are overkill for what I'm really trying to say: This is fucking great." -Dominique Leone |
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| Mar 2nd, 2006 11:14 AM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: Didn't really care for Black Star, myself. But then again, the most recent hip-hop I've been into was nine years ago. The Volcano Suns was alright. Kinda the same issues I had with Mission Of Burma... Good for a handful of songs, but then I start having trouble paying attention. The Matthew Herbert album is downloading mega-slow for me, for some reason. All of the others go at 500+KB/Sec, but this one won't go above 30KB/Sec. I'll hang in there, though. Didn't care for the Harvestman album I heard, but Ginnungagap are pretty rad! |
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| Mar 2nd, 2006 05:19 AM | ||
| sloth |
friend of the night is pretty awesome. im liking travel is dangerous, glasgow mega-snake and auto-rock too. im running late for a lecture but ill upload harvestman and ginnungagap when i get the time. |
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| Mar 1st, 2006 11:24 PM | ||
| Rongi | do y'all like black star? | |
| Mar 1st, 2006 06:34 PM | ||
| Rez |
Re: re: Quote:
i think they're still in process of mastering this fully (there's some dreck that's DOA, much less inspired) but they're having more pure, if less frequent moments where they really hit the nail on the head. mr beast is a damn fine album, and it's had a huge impact on me in the month i've had it. "friend of the night" is still the best song of 06 so far IMO. the flaming lips i'm letting sit awhile... after initial excitement (because i'm not a fan, i just liked yoshimi... sue me), i realized i was going to have to get involved in this album more than i had time for. in 2 months i've found at least 3 amazing and 3 more potentially amazing albums this year, so i'm going to wait for a lull, because i can already tell that this is a "full album" kind of deal. free radical is worming it's way into my head though. but i also dont know... i say i'll get back to it, but maybe thats because everything i'm hearing on first impression just isn't that engaging... who knows. talking about it like this should make me YSI both these albums right? well no, as jinxed, either YsI or my wireless connection are flipping out and being all slow and bitchy, and i proimised my friends Matthew Herbert's sextastic album "Scale" today, so you guys can join in on the fun on that or no. i'll have to copy mitchell's thing and put "xx" where the http is because the last link i put up here got closed in record time... i suspect largely due to direct linking... so just replace that when you copy and paste. Matthew Herbert - Scale  hxxp://s25.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1TSR3XGAM070K3APOBWFA4I719 making pop, R+b vocals, house, and proper string ensembles working together to make something ridiculously scandalous. listen to the first three tracks through, if you're not hooked then it;s not for you, the end. it's like Moon-Safari Air only more house music, less modest, wildly succesful and decadent, and of course sexually ambiguous. it's how "listenable pop," a term used to excuse shoddy crap that doesnt ouright irritate, should ACTUALLY sound like. |
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| Mar 1st, 2006 04:35 PM | ||
| iron mitchell |
re: h!!p://s51.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3TL3LLQYJF4073T7T8WJPP9CZ5 This is a demo for a compilation of various music I've written and recorded (alongside many friends of course) over the between 1995 and 2005. I was asked to put it together for a cdr release later this year, so it'll most likely be changed around plenty before it's actual release but I thought maybe I'd give it a test-run here first. Beware... Most of it's old and I tried to have plenty of rare/unreleased stuff for those folks who already have a lot of my goods. |
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| Mar 1st, 2006 04:34 PM | ||
| Rongi |
Mos Def & Talib Kweli - Black Star "While Puff Daddy and his followers continued to dictate the direction hip-hop would take into the millennium, Mos Def and Talib Kweli surfaced from the underground to pull the sounds in the opposite direction. Their 13 rhyme fests on this superior, self-titled debut as Black Star show that old-school rap still sounds surprisingly fresh in the sea of overblown vanity productions. There's no slack evident in the tight wordplays of Def and Kweli as they twist and turn through sparse, jazz-rooted rhythms calling out for awareness and freedom of the mind. Their viewpoints stem directly from the teachings of Marcus Garvey, the legendary activist who fought for the rights of blacks all around the world in the first half of the 20th century. Def and Kweli's ideals are sure lofty; not only are they out to preach Garvey's words, but they also hope to purge rap music of its negativity and violence. For the most part, it works. Their wisdom-first philosophy hits hard when played off their lyrical intensity, a bass-first production, and stellar scratching. While these MCs don't have all of the vocal pizzazz of A Tribe Called Quest's Phife and Q-Tip at their best, flawless tracks like the cool bop of "K.O.S. (Determination)" and "Definition" hint that Black Star is only the first of many brilliantly executed positive statements for these two street poets. " allmusic gave it a perfect score btw http://s62.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3...I16WZ56M1CFKGF |
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| Mar 1st, 2006 03:52 PM | ||
| MetalMilitia |
I won't trouble you with uploading it as black metal is scarcely played on my computer. Im going to upload something soon but my connection is so rediculously rubbish at uploading I may need to wait and do it while i'm at uni or somewhere. |
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