Yellow Swans – Going Places (2010)
02.08.2010
Portland duo Yellow Swans have been one of the guiding lights of the noise scene over the past decade, gracefully plucking beautifully marred fragments of noise from the surrounding radioactive fallout better than just about anyone without the last name Hecker. They announced their break-up in 2009, and Going Places is their final transmission. Yellow Swans’ sound has always explored something more delicate and sophisticated than their blown-out sound would initially belies, and they come close as ever to perfecting it on here. Desolate and blistering, yet with a distinct astral quality as well, almost like the sound of the white hot dust cloud left behind by a collapsing red giant. For me, Yellow Swans represent the small, fragile, yet undeniable sense of sentimentality for what has been lost within every process of destruction. Deep stuff.
For Fans Of: Burning Star Core, Mouthus, Prurient, Wolf Eyes
- Brian B.
Whisper Signal – Posthumous (2010)
02.04.2010
Musicians, music writers and music enthusiasts tend to take themselves very seriously. Music is serious business and damn it you will respect that. I will admit that I refer to myself as a “music blogger” any chance I get. Generally this seriousness is a good thing. Just think of the bands that don’t take themselves seriously, and you end up with bands like Barenaked Ladies and Smash Mouth, so keep an open mind when I tell you that Whisper Signal do not take themselves too seriously. Their ebullience is evident in their live shows via frontman Erik Adkins and his rapport with his band-mates on stage as well as their self proclaimed “Light Rock” sound.
This is not a knock on their craft. Musically and lyrically there is a great attention to detail and each song feels like it has a purpose. The opening track “Escape Artist” starts with fairly bare piano chords and light drumming accompanying Adkins’ mellow vocals. Light bass then enters the mix, followed one by one by different layered parts that seem to sneak up to a sonic high point…before disappearing just as you notice them.
There are a few moments on the album that fall short. Some of the vocals are overly ambitious and sometimes Adkins struggles to rise to the challenge. Overall though the high-aim pays off throughout. The second half is in my opinion the strongest section of the record. The last three tracks, Silent Valentine, Comaglow and Slow Enemies are simply dynamite, and really feature the strong guitar work of lead guitarist Daniel Holmes, who’s talents seem wasted when he is simply providing texture and layering earlier.
Overall the album is a solid first effort for a band still developing and shaping their sound. New members and a renewed commitment to playing live will only help Whisper Signal, and hopefully will not turn their personalities into something different than they are now…because we all know that music is serious business.
- Dave
Shlohmo – Shlomoshun Deluxe (2010)
01.27.2010
It always makes me feel a little stupid when someone younger than I am is releasing dope music, but that feeling’s easy to get over when the product is this good. 19 year old L.A. native Shlohmo never strays too far from the woozy blueprint established by his neighbors in the Brainfeeder and Alphapup camps, but his decidedly more ‘bedroom’ approach makes his ability to hang with those producers all that much more impressive. According to an interview I read while taking this in, most of the sounds were either cheaply recorded found sounds or old synths ghetto rigged to a laptop, which were then chopped and edited into these stumbling, glitchy jams. Standout ‘Hotboxing the Cockpit’, which has already gained the ear of Pitchfork and XLR8R, layers cascading, Joker-esque 8-bit synths over some molasses thick bass, avian field recordings and that classic Los Angeles swerve. This digital-only deluxe edition also comes with a slew of remixes, including one from Brainfeeder’s Tokimonsta. Pick this one up and hear how LA’s future-hop scene continues to flourish and thrive.
Standout tracks: ‘Hotboxing The Cockpit’, ‘Spoons’
For Fans Of: Flying Lotus, Joker, Nosaj Thing, Rustie
- Brian B.
There have been two records that have succesfully snapped me out of my long running electronic phase over the past 24 hours, and this is the first of them. If there’s any hope for what people generally refer to as ‘post-rock’, its in the hands of bands like Seattle’s Post Harbor. A far cry from the vocal-free gain-level exercises of much of the previous decade’s post rock, Post Harbor use well-timed vocals, visceral songwriting and pacing, and a wide yet consistent palette of sounds to stake their claim.
Don’t get it twisted though, PH definitely aren’t afraid to get loud when they need to, and They Can’t Hurt You… isn’t completely free of certain genre bullet points. But the earnestness that comes across in the recording, as well as a clear willingness to experiment with different sounds (check out that vocoder in ‘Shirakashi’ that somehow works flawlessly) lead me to mark these up to chance intersections rather than easy selling points.
Its always a gamble when bands of this stripe choose to add vocals to their sound, as they flirt with the danger of seeming tacked on at the last minute or worse, bogging down an otherwise grand composition with vocal or lyrical cheese. I haven’t delved into the lyrics really, but the vocals are treated with a great sense of reserve that adds another level of intimacy to their warm, emotive bursts.
I thought I was all but past searching out obscure post-rock bands, but here’s one that managed to burst through my ever-thickening emotional shell and hit somewhere that’s been dormant for awhile now. This album reminded me why I fell in love with this style of music in the first place, and I’m surprised and refreshed that it’s the first 2010 album I’ve really taken to.
For Fans Of: Moving Mountains, Unwed Sailor, Caspian
- Brian B.
Oneohtrix Point Never – Rifts (2009)
01.25.2010
Daniel Lopatin has been putting out longform synthesizer meditations under the curious moniker Oneohtrix Point Never (pretty sure I read that it’s supposed to be pronounced like a radio station frequency, i.e. 106.7 with ‘trix’ and ‘never’ instead of 6 and 7). Like many artists in the burgeoning DIY ambient/drone scene, he spreads his work across a multitude of extremely limited CD-Rs and tapes, which can be kind of a hassle to track down. Luckily, he’s put out Rifts to compile the best sounds off three of his latest albums onto one 2XCD release. OPN takes a lot of cues from early new-age ambient innovators like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, and all of the analog synths sound like they’re coming at you from a mid-70’s space documentary. It conjures up some neat images, and the whole retro-futurist vibe gives it a different spin than other ambient stuff. If you dig the synthy side of Emeralds, you’ll probably dig this, as well as the Skyramps project that Lopatin and Mark McGuire from Emeralds collaborated on a few years ago, which I just might post soon. Enjoy
For Fans Of: Emeralds, Tangerine Dream, Sun Araw
- Brian B.
No matter how much love you have for a song, two weeks after it becomes your alarm clock sound, you will hate it. To combat this I have this great little device called the Logitech Squeezebox, it is essentially an alarm clock that has about a million features, one of which is waking you up with pandora or last.fm. This is a blessing and a curse however, a blessing because you never grow to hate one single song, and a curse because it has made me spend a crap-ton of money on buying new music.
One of these such finds is an album from 2007 by the unfortunately named “The Real Tuesday Weld.” I gave up on trying to classify this record, as the genre shifts from place to place throughout the record. It opens with what sounds like a radio show introduction from the 1940’s, and transitions into “Anything But Love” a lightly jazzy number that you wouldn’t mind playing for your grandmother. Up next is a wonderful track “on lavender hill” that reminds me of the clientelle, which is a bit of a shift from the first 2 tracks…and afterward the album ventures off into areas that I can’t really classify, you just need to find some time and listen to the thing from cover to cover. You don’t really notice the blending of genres, you just know that you are enjoying what you are listening to.
Sorry to be so vague oh loyal readers, perhaps I should have picked a more straightforward album to talk about my first post back since the new year, but I couldn’t help it. Deep down I believe this to be a classic example of a concept album, and as soon as I figure out what the concept is, I’ll let you know.
- Dave
Selda – Selda (1976)
01.18.2010
Throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s, Selda Bağcan traveled around her native Turkey with a guitar and a fierce commitment to promoting free speech and openness in a society that was less than friendly to the arts and any sort of anti-establishment messages. Just like their American counterparts at the same time, artist, musicians, and others on the fringe of Turkish society rallied around Ms. Bağcan, her powerful, beautiful voice rising when there own were silenced and muffled by authority.
This self-titled long player, released in 1976, was a radical reinvention on both a personal level and for Turkish music as a whole. After a few years’ hiatus from her folk career, Selda exploded back onto the scene with the help of some of Turkey’s most forward-thinking musicians. As a result, Selda’s protestant lyrics and calls to action had a newfound backing of blistering psychedelic rock, the likes of which few in the conservative Middle East had ever seen.
While Turkey is a relatively liberal and free place compared to the rest of the Middle East, it was still unheard of for a woman musician to have command of such powerful and straight up ballsy music. Her previously quiet musings now packed a hell of an electrical punch, bringing undesired attention from the Turkish government who believed this new style would have the power to incite riots. Take one listen to songs like ‘Ince Ince’ and you’ll realize that they were probably right. Other songs like “Dam Üstüne Çul Serer” drip with the exotic, forlorn beauty of her earlier folk work while utilizing some of the earliest synthesizers to broaden the sonic palette.
Personally, a love of geography and history adds even more to the music for me. I know next to nothing about Turkish society in the 1970’s, but the blend of raucous Western rock with her native language, melodies, and instrumentation paint such a vivid picture. I can almost feel the sun beating down on my face and the bellbottoms on my legs as a walk through an Anatolian bazaar, dodging Volkswagen Bugs and goat-led carts in equal measure while the thumping breaks of “Gitme” blast from my boombox.
Considering the circumstances, a woman like Ms. Bağcan should have never been able to make a blistering, psychedelic rallying cry to the ideological fringe of 1970’s Turkey. The fact that she did all of this and much, much more is a testament to the strength and ingenuity of one of the most criminally underrated musicians of her time. Hopefully, thanks to the efforts of labels like Finders Keepers who have made her music available to an entirely new audience, this icon will finally get the recognition she deserves. If you like this album, definitely order the album from Finders Keepers so that they can keep on releasing amazing gems like this. I bought the MP3 version myself, but I’m sure it sounds insane on vinyl.
Standout Tracks: “Ince Ince”, “Gitme”, “Dam Üstüne Çul Serer”
- Brian B.
Glasslung – Perish (2010)
01.18.2010
It’s difficult for me to talk about where music comes from for me. It just does. There are a lot of things I could pin point that inspire me. I can think of one pretty clearly, but it’s going to sound a bit pretentious. Anyways there’s a loop of highway that goes around my city and I assume a lot of cities, called the outerbelt. And I live in a house in a suburb on the edge of said city, so I’m pretty close to it. But not too close. And at night if I look out my window I can faintly hear the highway, it’s a kind of wooshing, windy sound, but deeper. It’s really kind of sad sounding, and when I thought about it, it sounded so organic, yet was made by cars, machines, but was also made by people, driving at night trying to make it home. And that moved me, somehow.
So Glasslung is kind of like that, it’s me trying to find a connect between the organic, the machine, the human. It’s ambient/drone/electronic/noise music if that’s your thing. It’s a lot of analogue instruments and some digital synthesis and almost a year of patient, loving editing and distorting. I spent a long time recording old keyboards and analogue synths and guitars and sitting behind a computer with a cup of coffee or tea. A lot of it sounds sad, and windy and wooshy like the outerbelt. It’s really quite out there I guess, but, if in the right mood, is capable of being profoundly moving.
For me, at least. You can decide the validity of that on your own. But trying to put words to mine own music puts a sour taste in my mouth. It’s me. I don’t know how I feel, but I know it sounds like this.
-Brian S
I’m certain you’re familiar with Cursive; you’re probably not familiar with this album. And that’s a tragedy. Overshadowed by “masterpieces” like Domestica and The Ugly Organ, Storms has fallen uncomfortably under the radar. It was released after the band had broken up in ’98, before they got back together in ’99, going on to become kind of famous. It sounds undeniably Cursive-like (at least rather Domestica-like), with a comfortable amount of youthful exuberance, minus the concept and storyline. Instead young Kasher opted to write what is undeniably his wittiest lyrical achievement. In a winding narrative about semantics (go figure) and really subtle yet relatable aspects of everything mundane and crushingly important, Cursive lyrically mirror what’s going on musically. There’s a lot of really rough, crunchy hooks, it’s singable on the surface, and then you realize what you’re singing and give a dissatisfied smile.
The pop punk hooks hidden under a mixture of Fugazi and Cap’n Jazz fetish are so much stronger on this album than anything Cursive’s ever done after it. Everything meshes in a thick, loose jumble of punk rock nakedness and enthusiastic beauty. The guitars will oft break down into a fury of gorgeous dissonance. Kasher’s raw hybrid shouting/singing soars, rips through his larynx and straight to the heart. It’s the sound of growing up.
But I would be lying if this review weren’t a huge nostalgia trip. It reminds me of being 13 and sense of revolutionary aspirations chipping away and people I knew and loved chipping away with it in a low- class suburban slow cooker of cheap drugs and consumerism. It reminds me of kissing girls and summer and walking around without a care. It’s that kind of album It’s as much a living, breathing experience as it is music, as all good music is. Of course I can’t give that to you in a few mp3s. You’ve got to live and breathe with it, on your own.
-Brian S
Floating Points
01.08.2010
I’ve been bumping all the tracks I can find from up and coming UK producer Floating Points for the past few weeks and I just realized he was post-less on here. No more! Information on this 22 year old is sparse, but his sound definitely isn’t. Combining the rubbery bass of dubstep, off-kilter 2-step rhythms, and the drawn out, meditative synths and samples of deep house, these tracks are built more for late night head-nodding than the club. It’s all very relaxing, yet listenable and catchy stuff. Here’s two releases to check out, with hopefully many more to come.
J&W Beat 12″ | Buy
Vacuum EP | Buy
edit: links taken down by request
dash n blast
