Sonic Process

Monoceros "Tales From Late Night Remixes"

2008-12-13T20:25:00.001+01:00

Artist: Monoceros
Album: Tales From Late Night Remixes
Label: Imaginary Nonexistent Records
Release date: 1 April 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Glitch/Ambient Techno
RIYL: Kettel, Xela, Telefon Tel Aviv

Tracklisting:
01. Background Birds [Flotel Remix]
02. Happiness [Betelgeuse Bipolar Remix]
03. Tales For Silent Nights [Macroeconomics Remix]
04. Warm [Maps And Diagrams Remix]
05. Little Pieces [Heezen Remix]
06. Happiness [An On Bast Remix]
07. Northern Lights [Spoweck Shadow Remix]
08. Tales For Silent Nights [Crisopa Remix]
09. Depression And Vortex At Jan Mayen [Soundhacker Remix]
10. Happiness [Flüor Remix]
11. The Day We Become One [Leon Somov Remix]
12. Warm [The Boats Remix]
13. Happiness Edit 2 [DARK.SINUS.WAVE]
Total running time: 73' 00"

[Monoceros - Open MySpace page]

"Monoceros is Joan Malé. He lives in St Martí d’Empúries, a little town in Catalonia, the north of Spain. He has recorded many albums and Ep’s in Expanding Records, Phonobox and recently in his own label Imaginary Nonexistent Records. He also performed in sonar 2005, producing electronic music classified as “IDM” or electronica. He also uses other names, like Salad (sonar 2006), .Exe (with a EP on Dpress Industries) and Lumière (and old project with Xavi Lloses) who released an EP in 2000 and 2 tracks in US label Basiclux." [source]

Sonic: Free releases rarely come as good as this: gathering a host of glitchy electronic artists Monoceros' remix collection not only stands very strong on its own, but provides us with an excellent starting point to discover many of the artists that have helped to make this such a great record. Highlights include Maps and Diagrams' Warm remix, with its glitchy beats and warm synthesisers that recall Xela's "For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights". Crisopa's Tales For Silent Nights' remix, with its up-tempo beat and acid sounds, reminds me of Kettel's "My Dogan". Flüor's Happiness remix manages to pull out the difficult blend of ambient pop with classical piano to great effect. An On Bast's own rendition of Happiness is a much meaner affair, with its saturated beats providing for some good but way too short head-bouncing moments. Recommended.

[Download]

Karma "Thrillseekers"

2008-12-12T07:49:00.000+01:00

Artist: Karma
Album: Thrillseekers
Label: Spectrum Works
Release date: 1999
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo/Nu Jazz/Drum 'N' Bass
RIYL: Kruder & Dorfmeister, Tosca, Peace Orchestra

Tracklisting:
01. Overture
02. Let's Go Thrillseeking
03. Del Mar
04. Romance
05. Got My Mojo Working
06. Drunken Hero
07. 24 Hours Of Le Mans
08. Comeback
09. The Ballad Of Evil Knievel
10. Five Fourth Of A Whole
11. Fittipaldi
12. Danny's Break
13. Bateria E Baixa
14. Stupid Accident
Total running time: 71' 45"

[Karma - Let's Go Thrillseeking - Video Clip]

[Karma - My Resting Place - Video Clip]

"THRILLSEEKING, Karma's second album, is quite the improvement over their first, PAD SOUNDS. For one, the production is much smoother. Secondly, their songwriting is much tighter and more focused. The laidback grooves are still present, from "Let's Go Thrillseeking" (with its revving engine sounds) onwards. "Del Mar" has a strong rhythmic sensibility matched with jazzy undertones, while "Got My Mojo Working" takes the basic 12-bar blues and crafts it into a driving force. Wisely, the Karma boys keep the tracks developing throughout their length, in order to reduce the stagnation that hampered PAD SOUNDS. My favorite track, "The Ballad of Evil Knievel," mixes heavier sounds in with an easygoing rhythm and spacy synths. "Five Fourths of a Whole" goes for pure lounge atmosphere, while "Danny's Break" adds some scratches by the dextrous Danny Breaks. "Bateria E Baixa" increases the rhythmic content but keeps things grounded with a nice plucked bass. "Stupid Accident" ends things on a wandering note, a slow drive through a desert. A wonderful album, through and through." [scoundrel@discogs]

Sonic: I have listened to this album countless times, and I have yet to grow tired of it. It's the perfect soundtrack for when driving around at night in your car with the volume up to eleven: bliss! This one comes highly recommended if you like the nostalgia of Kruder & Dorfmeister's sound.

[Download]

Kammerflimmer Kollektief "Cicadidae"

2008-12-12T04:47:00.001+01:00

Artist: Kammerflimmer Kollektief
Album: Cicadidae
Label: Staubgold
Release date: 14 April 2003
Genre: Electronic/Jazz
Style: Nu Jazz
RIYL: Triosk, Nils Petter Molvær, Eivind Aarset, Jaga Jazzist

Tracklisting:
01. Neumond Inselhin
02. Sie Tranken Regen
03. Über Die Wasserscheide
04. Blood
05. ...Denn Nacht Ist Jetzt Schon Bald!
06. Sie Tranken Regen (Version)
07. Mantra
08. Eiderdaunen (Gerupft)
09. Irgendwann: Frühling
10. "There's A Weight On You, But You Can't Feel It"
Total running time: 42' 35"

[Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Open MySpace page]

[Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Gras - Unofficial Video Clip]

"This lot have been one of Germany's most interesting musical exports of the last few years. Like a lot of bands from Norway to Chicago to Manchester, they've been exploring the murky hinterlands of electronics and real-time playing that draws from jazz and free improvisation, but the results are very much their own.

Previous Kollektief efforts have hinged around the shimmering, humid soundscapes generated by Thomas Weber's guitar, piano, harmonium and processing. These are prodded and sometimes torn apart by the restless yet simultaneously restrained contributions of the rest of the band, particularly double bassist Johannes Frisch.

On Cicadidae, bass and drums provide restrained slo-mo pulses and fragile, resonant jazz stylings, which are often looped and treated to frame Weber's yearning guitar lines and cloudy atmospherics. Often ("Mantra", "Sie tranken Regen") the music sounds like a 60s Blue Note session beamed in from a parallel universe. Dietrich Foth's saxophone unfurls smoky, hesitant lines and gentle, abstract flutterings, while Frisch provides deep, resonant throb or occasional muttered creaks with the bow. The rhythms are gentle, yet insistent.

An exquisite, all too short reading of Annette Peacock's "Blood" is the album's highlight. Vibraphone and bass sketch the hymnal melody, joined by lush violin figures and soft digital crackle. It's exqusitely lovely. Having said that, there's little here that's not beautiful; there's much that's mysterious and opaque too, which gives the music its power. The same goes for the cover, which is one of the oddest to drop through the BBC letterbox for some time; it might be a still from an early David Lynch film, marked with a kind of surrealist, opulent decadence. Recommended." [BBC]

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The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble "The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble"

2008-12-11T16:19:00.003+01:00

Artist: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
Album: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
Label: Planet Mu
Release date: 24 April 2006
Genre: Electronic/Jazz
Style: Nu Jazz
RIYL: The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, The Cinematic Orchestra, Amon Tobin

Tracklisting:
01. The Nothing Changes
02. Pearls For Swine
03. Adaptation Of The Koto Song
04. Lobby
05. Parallel Corners
06. Rivers Of Congo
07. Solomon's Curse
08. Amygdhala
09. Guernican Perspectives
10. Vegas
11. March Of The Swine
Total running time: 69' 07"

[The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble - Open MySpace page]

[The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble - The Nothing Changes - Live in Budapest, 2007]

[The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble - Goya - Live in Budapest, 2007]

"Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble (KDE) might be new to some, so first off a quick introduction. They are a duo consisting of Jason Kohnen (Bong-Ra) and Gideon Kiers (Telcosystems). They formed KDE in and around 2000, and started out by creating soundtracks to moody silent films such as Murnau's Nosferatu and Lang's Metropolis. Mainly being a Kohnen/Kiers project, they’ve also added some new members for this album such as Hilary Jeffrey on trombone, Nina Hitz on Cello and Edwin Loman on guitar. The album is apparently heavily inspired by Philadelphia filmmakers and surrealist animators The Quay Brothers, and it is their second release as KDE after their remix for JMX's ’1.2.AB’ 12” released on Life Enhancing Audio in 2003. And what an album it is. Take a piece of The Cinematic Orchestra’s cinematic jazz, a dash of The Broadway Project’s dark/noir, a hint of Amon Tobin’s twisted mutant jazz and a little Freeform Arkestra orchestral ambience. Throw in a minipinch of Dj Shadow and Major Force West, and a good dose of Planet Mu-ism and you’re pretty much there. As you might have understood by now, it’s a very versatile album.

Take the opening track ’The Nothing Changes’ for example. A simple shuffle/percussive backdrop with a heavy upright bass to kill for, sweet strings, a haunting guitar and horror cinema horns on top. Pure quality! ’Pearls for Swine’ hints towards Dj Shadow, although with a little more sophisticated electronics. Track tree is pure cinematic jazz loveliness, and having a big soft spot for TCO, this is one of my favourites on the album. ’Lobby’ is probably the most progressive track on the CD, starting off smooth with only cellos and muted shufflebeats, adding twisted keys and sound effects as it progresses and builds itself to a horror flick climax of noise at the end. Massive track! Onto even more sweet TCO like cinematic jazziness on ’Parallel Corners’, while ’Rivers of Congo’ takes us deeper and darker into Darkjazz noir landscapes. The imaginary motion picture soundtrack continues along a fine cinematic jazz red line until the next to last track ’Vegas’ stirs tings up again to Squarepusher-esque heights, before the epic grand finale that is ’March of the Swine’ sets in. A 20-minute long journey that makes this album from The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble complete. I would love to see the movie... " [Beyondjazz]

[Download(part1.part2).Buy]

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Dolores"

2008-12-11T15:34:00.000+01:00

Artist: Bohren & Der Club Of Gore
Album: Dolores
Label: PIAS
Release date: 10 October 2008
Genre: Jazz
Style: Ambient
RIYL: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation

Tracklisting:
01. Staub
02. Karin
03. Schwarze Biene (Black Maja)
04. Unkerich
05. Still Am Tresen
06. Welk
07. Von Schnäbeln
08. Orgelblut
09. Faul
10. Welten
Total running time: 58' 24"

[Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Open MySpace page]

"Four drunk Germans formed Bohren & der Club of Gore one night in 1992 with a single goal: "The audience," Morten Gass told the metal zine Maelstrom in 2003, "must have the feeling of being in a grave." Naming the band inspired debate. "Bohren" means "drill," like what people do to other people in horror movies; "gore" means "gore," like what seeps out of people when they're drilled, and like a Dutch instrumental band they all quite liked; and "and der club of" made them think of jazz. Jazz, they agreed, was cool. It was urban and dangerous-- they liked the idea of it. Stated influences were Black Sabbath and Sade. "As I said," Gass confessed, "we were drunk." Cheers to auspicious beginnings.

The music Bohren makes is slow, quiet, and pretty. It's too structured to be jazz and too vivid to be ambient, but it taps into the ideals of both. They play their instruments like they're worried of waking babies asleep at their feet. Christoph Clöser's saxophone parts leak from the bell of his horn. You can almost see Morten Gass wince as his fingers sink into his keyboard. Drummer Thorsten Benning lives with the task of supressing every teenage dream of beating the shit out his drumkit like the wild animal I suspect he sometimes wants to be. But in near-stasis, there's drama-- each beat becomes a cliffhanger for the next. Bohren don't play dead, they play mortally wounded.

They're the gentlest black metal band on earth. They're anti-social cocktail music. They're exotica, but only if we agree that vacant alleys are exotic places and lying face down in one of them would constitute a vacation. The restraint in their music creates as much tension as it does calm. At best-- 2004's Black Earth-- Bohren sound like they're passing through darkness, palms out and eyes open, in search of a lightswitch. It's the same eerie, bloodless quality of ersatz jazz that David Lynch depended on for club scenes in Mullholland Drive or Audrey Horne's twirling in "Twin Peaks", where the mellow becomes queasy and relaxation sours into uncertainty – when what's supposed to relax you starts to actively upset you.

Creeps? First-rate. But they're strangely affectionate, too, a quality brought to the fore on Dolores, their sixth and latest full-length. Absorb the title and cover art-- a woman's name, glowing; moths pouring from the neck of some sexless, celestial being. It's cozy, leaden music. Songs have shortened to three or four minutes. Some of the melodies aren't just memorable, but actually hummable. Call this their "standards" album-- More Near-Static Ballads of Death's Sweet Embrace. Bohren aren't fabulous enough to be goths. They keep it austere. The grave might be a lonely place, but the dead always downplay its warmth." [Pitchfork]

[Kudos to jazzever for this link.]

[Download.Buy]

Black Lung "Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars"

2008-12-10T09:46:00.002+01:00

Artist: Black Lung
Album: Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars
Label: Dorobo
Release date: 1994
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient/Industrial
RIYL: Snog, Soma, Celluloïd Mata

Tracklisting:
01. The Banque Of Worms
02. Theme From The Black Lung Pt. 2
03. The Trilateral Commision
04. Prozac Parade
05. Somatime
06. Rex 84
07. Ridjeck Theme
08. The Battle Of Brazil
09. Supermarket Dream
10. Everything You Know Is Wrong
11. Theme From Black Lung Pt. 1
12. Death Squad Blues
13. Meat Manager
14. The Bilderberg Group
Total running time: 73' 11"

[Black Lung - Open MySpace page]

"Black Lung is an electronic and industrial music project by Australian musician David Thrussell, also known for his industrial bands Snog and the more ambient Soma.

The first Black Lung album, 1994's Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, was mostly composed of instrumental tracks taken from Snog's first album Lies Inc. and the Hey, Christian God single. A year later, the album was also released on Germany's Machinery Records as Silent Weapons for Silent Wars. Thrussell disowned this later release due to the incorrect title, changes made to the artwork, and the fact that the tracks were in the wrong order, destroying the album's continuity. Several more albums followed in subsequent years, eventually outpacing the number of albums Thrussell was releasing as Snog.

In 1999, Thrussell collaborated with John Sellekaers from Xingu Hill to produce the 10" EP The Andronechron Incident, purportedly a soundtrack for an obscure Italian science fiction film. A full-length CD of the same title, containing many more additional tracks, was released in 2002 .

Thematically, Thrussell has used the project as an opportunity to indulge his fascination with conspiracy theories, with many album and track titles referencing conspiracies. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, also used by Wu-Tang Clan, refers to a document which came to light in the mid 1980s detailing a New World Order plan. Rhic-Edom is a direct reference to the acronym RHIC-EDOM: Radio-Hypnotic Intracerebral Control & Electronic Dissolution of Memory. The albums' liner notes frequently contain essays on various esoteric subjects, excerpted from conspiracy books or written by Thrussell himself.

Since 1999, nearly all Black Lung releases have been on German industrial label Ant-Zen." [Wikipedia]

[Download(part1.part2).Sold Out]
[password: niceolum]

Arpanet "Inertial Frame"

2008-12-09T07:12:00.001+01:00

Artist: Arpanet
Album: Inertial Frame
Label: Record Makers
Release date: 20 November 2006
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental Techno/Abstract
RIYL: Dopplereffekt, Drexciya

Tracklisting:
01. Universe Oscillation
02. Großvater Paradoxon
03. Axis Of Rotation
04. Infinite Density
05. Zero Volume
06. Twin Paradox
07. No Boundry Condition
08. Schwarzchild Radius
09. Event Horizon
10. Chandrasekhars Limit
11. Ergosphere
12. Lorentz Contraction
13. Gravitational Lense
Total running time: 47' 47"

[Arpanet - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Arpanet - No Boundry Condition - Max/MSP + Jitter experiment]

[Arpanet - Infinite Density - Video Clip]

"As part of Drexciya and Dopplereffekt Gerald Donald can often be found in the catalogues of labels like International Deejay Gigolo, Warp and Tresor. In fact his track ‘Z-Bozon’, which he produced while hanging out with his Dopplereffekt Friends, is set to appear as the opening track of Gigolo boss DJ Hell’s upcoming mix CD “Misch Masch vol. 3”. But for this new album under his Arpanet guise, Donald returns to Air's Record Makers label for more scientific madness.

Taking the name Arpanet from the progenitor of today’s internet, it isn’t hard to guess that on his second album Donald once again looks at music more scientifically, not solely in the naming of tracks like ‘Event Horizon’ and the “Inertial Frame” album tile itself, but also in his choice of futuristic synths, computerized samples and spaced out pads.

Arpanet fans, that’s the artist not the Internet’s father, will possibly be confused, confronted and bewildered by the amount of vocal tracks on “Inertial Frame”. While it could be considered a stretch to call it singing, Donald intones lyrics on numerous occasions for example the reticent tunes ‘Zero Volume’ and ‘Twin Paradox’ as well as the only infinitesimally more verbose ‘Event Horizon’ and ‘Gravitational Lense’.

Recently Arpanet’s ‘NTT DoCoMo’ was picked up by Laurent Garnier for his half of the “Kings Of Techno” compilation. While there is plenty of well produced music on “Inertial Frame” there aren’t many that would be immediately picked up for “techno” mix CDs. ‘Axis Of Rotation’. ‘Infinite Density’ and ‘No Boundry Condition’ are obvious exceptions however and most pieces on the album leave a lot of room for other artists to interpret them as they like into dancefloor ready remixes. The chilling vocals of ‘Twim Paradox’, one of the albums highlights, would sound especially good pumping out speaker stacks over a banging four-four beat." [HigherFrequency]

[Download.Buy]

Bitstream "Domestic Economy 7"

2008-11-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

Artist: Bitstream
Album: Domestic Economy 7
Label: Modern Love
Release date: January 2005
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental Techno
RIYL: Autechre, Clark, Aphex Twin

Tracklisting:
01. Ice Core Laboratory
02. Come And Play With Us
03. Open Sesame
04. Chain
05. Bass Lobe
06. Dragon 32
07. Orange Room
08. Geodesic Space Dome
09. Skymon
10. Test Tube
11. F Codex
Total running time: 54' 30"

"When it's taken you the bast part of ten years to complete your debut album, it better be sick!! 'Domestic Economy 7' is a pummeling beast of devastation from the brothers Steve and Dave conner, a blistering assault of darkest electro grinds and industrial machinations falling appart at every joint and seam. Having never been confined by any mediocre or slapdash IDM templates, this music can be illuminated by its guiding influences - old school electro, Detroit Techno, choral transmissions as perfected by Penderecki and Ligeti, the ability to fuse the tricks of the old turntablist masters with the advanced digital techniques that lend everything on this awesome record such an uncompromisingly dark, twisted scale. The few people who have already heard 'Domestic Economy 7' have been totally floored by its unusual, uncompromising bass brutality - Andrea Parker has already described it as "the sickest electro album I have heard for time.." while even Depeche Mode's Martin Gore has been spotted spinning Bitstream 12"s in Berlin. In an age where inspired fractured electronic music is an absolute rarity - Bitstream not only re-define the agenda, they not only rule the show, they goddamn OWN it." [Boomkat]

[Download.Buy]

Anders Ilar "Sworn"

2008-11-27T20:38:00.000+01:00

Artist: Anders Ilar
Album: Sworn
Label: Level
Release date: 9 May 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno
RIYL: Efdemin, Ellen Allien, Isolée

Tracklisting:
01. Hillside
02. Colors Of Rain
03. Icarus & Pegasus
04. September Nights
05. Made For Us To Love
06. Imaginary Trees With Silver Leaves
07. Tomorrow Never Came
08. Can't Force A Tree To Grow
09. Path To The Sky
10. Brokenhearted
11. Lakeside
Total running time: 78' 22"

[Anders Ilar - Open MySpace page]

"Minimal techno albums have a propensity for using nearly the entire available 80 minute runtime of the compact disc. Deep immersion is a prerequisite to fully appreciating the nuances of a meticulously wrought, long-form minimal groove. But the beauty of minimal is its versatility; use it for background music and it polishes a room’s atmosphere to the icy, Teutonic cool of a Berlin nightclub; coil up with some headphones and a comfortable chair and you fall into it like a dream; and of all the musical idioms regarded as synergistic with drugs, minimal techno is the most unsung.

An on-form Anders Ilar metes out 79 minutes of wan, hyperborean micro-tech and svelte minimal in his latest full length, his fifth, Sworn. The first track, Hillside, sets the tone with melancholy, pelagic strings floating dreamily above a deep bass hook and a mid tempo 4/4 kick drum. A seesawing processed keyboard loop lolls into the spectral reverberating ether. Delay-soaked bleeps stutter sublimely in phase with the beat but at slightly unstable intervals. Eight minutes passes too fast. Colors of Rain, the second track, evocatively and aptly titled, mines similar territory but is busier with flickers of snare drum and hi-hat fulgurating in counterpoint to an epic, meandering, minor key keyboard solo that slips into different tonal shades courtesy of minutely shifting filter envelopes. The attention to detail Ilar exerts on tracks like this is staggering, following the lively percussion around the keyboard and pulses of bass is a demanding task. Icarus and Pegasus recalls Martes era Murcof. A ghostly piano refrain sweeps through the track; notes slur and tug on each other, teasing your ears with their peculiar texture, and land slightly off the timing of the clinical beat. Low in the mix but streaked with reverb are synth tracers flying through a hooky coda and glitching out. Sampled 50s dialogue dissolving in soft static conveys you to the album’s crucial fourth track, September Nights. Muted, crackling spangles of feedback garnish this sweet emotive pair of bass and synth loops that play lambently back and forth. It’s the most minimal track on the album and it’s my personal favorite. When the liquid piano comes in its ping pong delayed patter wobbles like a little wave and will thrill anyone infatuated with Pantha du Prince’s recent album on Dial. September Nights is unaccountably expressive; it feels sad but hopeful, sort of recalling the downcast euphoria that Burial shot for with Untrue. Absolutely timeless.

This expressiveness unfolds like a silent narrative throughout the album. On Imaginary Trees, the sixth track, Ilar redeploys some more beautiful twining keyboard and jumps between major and minor keys with the clarion rattle of an electronically stretched hi-hat mediating and oozing the first wintry isolation and then cool vernal shade. The last three songs, Path to the Sky, Brokenhearted and Lakeside, are a departure from the musical paradigm of the previous eight. Brokenhearted is a straightforward piece of sinuous house, its mix is a little weaker than the rest of Sworn but it eschews the direct and obvious payoff of a blinding melodic hook for a complex weave of texture and rhythm that gradually gains currency with listens. Lakeside would be at home on a pop ambient compilation with its dense sonic gauze but tacks away from the Kompakt aesthetic with a propulsive Detroit bass and vaguely menacing synths. Masterfully executed." [experimusic]

[Download.Buy]

Fax "Yo Recuerdo"

2008-11-20T18:59:00.002+01:00

Artist: Fax
Album: Yo Recuerdo
Label: Static Discos
Release date: 13 May 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient Techno/Downtempo/Shoegazing
RIYL: Farben, Murcof, Anders Ilar

Tracklisting:
01. Intro
02. Cuarto Para Tres
03. Concreto
04. Cielo Rojo
05. Rota
06. Yo Recuerdo (I Remember)
07. Bosque
08. Tormenta De Arena
09. Millas
10. Cuarto Para Tres (Dance Mix)
Total running time: 51' 39"

[Fax - Open MySpace page]

[Fax - Live]

"Moments of heartbreak, the slow-burning return of memories and evenings spent all night wired seem to all appear and flow through Fax’s latest release Yo Recuerdo. Moving away ever so slightly from his earlier, darker recordings, Ruben Tamayo, who is Fax, reduces the beat ratio in favour warmly treated guitars and synth haze. Closely related to Fourtet’s “Rounds” of a few years back this album appears slow and sweet whilst washing in wonderful swathes of rounded, reverberating sound.

As mentioned above, the tracks feel like the hours just prior to and surrounding sunrise. The beats are soft and warm, like knocking blocks of wood together while the bass travels long and low beside. The album picks up the pace about half-way through on ‘Rota’, a thudding heart-beat around which a simple guitar line is allowed to flutter and slide. Its so rare to hear an electronica artist utilise this many guitars in their recordings and it seems that wherever they can be drawn out by the ear they shimmer and move lightly through and occasionally appearing at the fore as major motifs. The two vocal tracks ‘Yo Recuerdo’ and ‘Tormenta De Arena’ feature Uriel Villalobos of Mexican rock group Perdutto, and the Argentinean singer Florencia Ruiz respectively. Both tracks are given to the singers as dreamscapes almost, their voices being allowed to move through the songs in a similarly sleepy wandering way. Which is not to say they sound tired or pedestrian, its more like they’re running through their nostalgias in the hours before sleep, allowing Fax to create the mood and setting.

For all its night-time visions and breathy remembering the Yo Recuerdo is wonderfully bright as a release. Its soft and warm and light and airy and makes you want to quickly opt out of this interminable winter in search of some Mexican wonderland of warm, eternal dawn." [Cyclic Defrost]

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Instructions to download this one:
1. Open the ifolder download page
2. Click on the link in small font and bold: cкачать
3. Click on any sponsor link and then wait 30 secs
4. A new window should open: enter the code that is given to you
5. Click on the link that shows up and the download should start

Helios "Caesura"

2008-11-12T04:29:00.001+01:00

Artist: Helios
Album: Caesura
Label: Type
Release date: 11 November 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo/Ambient
RIYL: Goldmund, Ulrich Schnauss, Arovane, Xela

Tracklisting:
01. Hope Valley Hill
02. Come With Nothings
03. Glimpse
04. Fourteen Drawings
05. Backlight
06. The Red Truth
07. A Mountain Of Ice
08. Mima
09. Shoulder To Hand
10. Hollie
Total running time: 49' 11"

[Kudos to Obscure Sound for the mp3 files.]

[Helios - Open MySpace page]

"Keith Kenniff has been with Type from the very beginning, and now as Type is well into its fifth year he offers us his fifth gorgeous release. In five years Keith’s style has evolved constantly, with his drifting piano compositions taking the Goldmund label and the Helios sound moving out from undreneath the clipped beat-heavy electronics of ‘Unomia’ and into a more unique place, even incorporating vocals on the ‘Ayres’ mini album. ‘Caesura’ however is his ‘proper’ follow-up to the acclaimed ‘Eingya’, and sees Keith return to the instrumental sound he knows so well. In fact in many ways ‘Caesura’ is a more electronic work than its predecessors, blending layer upon layer of synthesizer and adding his assured drumming to come up with the perfect meeting of indie-pop and ambient music. The haunting cinematic element is still present of course, but these songs are more rounded and confident than any in Keith’s career.

From the delicate bliss of ‘Hope Valley Hill’ which opens up the album with gauzy nostalgia and, as the title promised, hope, through the chunky pop of ‘Come With Nothings’ it is clear that Keith’s music is as arresting as it ever was. Taking cues from the lilting indie-electronics of Ulrich Schnauss and the unfussy ambience of Brian Eno, Keith manages to inject this with his knowledge as a composer. The epic harmonies of ‘Backlight’ for instance reveal a lightness of touch rarely heard in the genre with sweeping synthesized chords buzzing alongside Keith’s signature guitar.

Accompanied by more gorgeous artwork from Matthew Woodson, ‘Caesura’ is a glowing record for the winter months, and a glimmer of hope to keep the seasons at bay." [Type]

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Sylvain Chauveau "The Black Book Of Capitalism"

2008-11-10T17:00:00.000+01:00

Artist: Sylvain Chauveau
Album: The Black Book Of Capitalism
Label: Type
Release date: October 2008 [original release: 2000]
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical/Ambient/Downtempo
RIYL: Max Richter, Goldmund, Eluvium

Tracklisting:
01. Et Peu À Peu Les Flots Respiraient Comme On Pleure
02. JLG
03. Hurlements En Faveur De Serge T.
04. Le Marin Rejeté Par La Mer
05. Dernière Étape Avant Le Silence
06. Dialogues Avec Le Vent
07. Ses Mains Tremblent Encore
08. Ma Contribution À L'industrie Phonographique
09. Géographie Intime
10. Je Suis Vivant Et Vous Êtes Morts
11. Mon Royaume
12. Potlatch (1971-1999)
13. Un Souffle Remua La Nuit
Total running time: 44' 29"

[Sylvain Chauveau - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Sylvain Chauveau - Nuage - Video Clip]

[Sylvain Chauveau - Never Let Me Down Again (Depeche Mode cover) - Video Clip]

"Sylvain Chauveau is one of those artists we hear mentioned a great deal, yet he has proven strangely elusive when it comes to tracking down his work. Best known (and easiest to get hold of) is his seminal Fat Cat album 'Un Autre Decembre' which set him up as one of the world's premier exponents of the electronic/classical sound, but Sylvain had already been releasing records long before that album hit the shelves. 'The Black Book of Capitalism' originally appeared in 2000 on the French DSA imprint and sadly never hit UK shores, but Type (Sylvain's new base of operations) have managed to put together a gloriously remastered and repackaged version for the wider world to hear at last. Those of you who have been enamoured with the artist's stark, minimal sound might be shocked at first to hear the variety on offer; 'The Black Book of Capitalism' is far from a mere classical record, and shows a breadth of sound never again seen in Sylvain's catalogue to date. From the mournful, delicate piano-work of 'Et Peu a Peu les Flots...' we are transported through a veritable sideshow of gallic musical expertise, with the doomy almost Bohren-esque jazz of 'Hurlements en Favour de Serge T.' and through a chiming fairytale with 'Derniere Etape avant le Silence'. There are almost traces of Angelo Badalamenti's work lost in the grooves here, with the gauzy world of European cinema seeping from every crack and punctuating Sylvain's compositions with both confidence and a deft humour. It might be over eight years old now but nothing of the album has been lost with time, it has matured with age, showing new depths and character with every year that has gone by. With 'The Black Book of Capitalism' Sylvain delivered his most widescreen work so far and it's an absolute pleasure to be able to hear it again in all its glory." [Boomkat]

[Download.Buy(vinyl only)]

Max Richter "24 Postcards In Full Colour"

2008-11-09T14:35:00.001+01:00

Artist: Max Richter
Album: 24 Postcards In Full Colour
Label: 130701
Release date: 25 August 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical/Ambient
RIYL: Sylvain Chauveau, Library Tapes, Jóhann Jóhannsson

Tracklisting:
01. The Road Is A Grey Tape
02. H In New England
03. This Picture Of Us. P.
04. Lullaby From The Westcoast Sleepers
05. When The Northern Lights / Jasper And Louise
06. Circles From The Rue Simon – Crubellier
07. Cascade NW By W
08. A Sudden Manhattan Of The Mind
09. In Louisville At 7
10. Cathodes
11. I Was Just Thinking
12. A Song For H / Far Away
13. Return To Prague
14. Broken Symmetries For Y
15. Berlin By Overnight
16. Cradle Song For A (Interstate B3)
17. Kierling / Doubt
18. From 553 W Elm Street, Logan Illinois (Snow)
19. Tokyo Riddle Song
20. The Tartu Piano
21. Cold Fusion For G
22. 32 Via San Nicolo
23. Found Song For P.
24. H Thinks A Journey
Total running time: 33' 43"

[Max Richter - Open MySpace page]

[Max Richter - Circles From The Rue Simon – Crubellier - Video Clip]

[Max Richter - Song - Video Clip]

"Following eighteen months after Edinburgh-based pianist / composer Max Richter’s last album comes the release of the gorgeous, intriguingly framed ’24 Postcards In Full Colour’. Richter’s fourth album is a dazzling conceptual exercise of great beauty and emotional resonance. Certainly his most concise, ’24 Postcards…’may also be Max’s most coherent and compelling work to date. Beautifully played, richly textured and detailed, the album foregrounds Max’s sheer class as a composer and producer.

An attempt an exploration of the ringtone as a vehicle for music performance , ‘24 Postcards…’ is an experimental work made up of 24 classically-composed ringtones, set to be premièred in various gallery spaces. The première is intended to be in the form of a series of installations where pre-registered audience members switch on their phones to receive SMS messages, each message alert playing back one or more of the tracks, so making up the performance. In tandem with this release, will be a micro-website hosting 24 photographic images, one accompanying each track. As Max explains: “Thinking about how we listen to music today, I wondered why it is that ringtones have so far been treated as unfit for creative music… Who says ringtones have to be bad?.. It’s like saying LPs or CDs are bad – its just a medium….”

“Because the piece is a collection of tones, where I have no control of the order, I made a structure that holds together by use of shared material – like a cloud of pieces, or a handful of confetti, or a constellation of fragments – to be navigated as you like…” Max views the writing process in similar terms - shuffling basic elements into new constellations. The palette Max limited himself to consists of string quintet; solo piano; 16 track 2 inch tape; transistors; found shortwave radio; vinyl clicks, dust, scratches and rumble; and acoustic guitars. The players on the album are Louisa Fuller (violin),Robert Mc Fall (violin), Natalia Bonner (violin), John Metcalfe (Viola), Ian Burdge (Cello), Chris Worsey (Cello), Sua Lee (Cello), Preston Reed (Guitar), and Richter himself on piano.

Fragmentary and partial by nature, these 24 brief tracks work as a varied collection of evocative miniatures - each offering a glimpse into potentially much larger pieces. The longest track here is just under three minutes, whilst the majority clock in at around just sixty seconds. Each bearing its own particular weight and measure, these haunting vignettes come across as a series of sketches on the (fugitive) nature of time and memory, stitched together to form a series of jump-cuts and foldbacks in time (the album continually reprising itself and filling the listener with a sense of deja-vu).

As though extracting the absolute essence, simple, plaintive piano and string melodies - no excess, no waste, pure concentrate - butt up against passages of rich, borderzone ambience - radio static / voices leaking through dense, shifting drones. At points recalling the likes of Boards Of Canada, Bibio, and Gas (in terms of depth / grain rather than sound or style), at others Minimalism or the Elizabethan instrumental music of Henry Purcell, there’s also something about its nature that brings to mind authors like WG Sebald, Marcel Proust and filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky." [FatCat]

[Download.Buy]

Wassup 2008

2008-11-04T13:05:00.000+01:00

It's been eight long years since the boys said wassup to each other. Even with the effects of a down economy and imminent change in the White House, the boys are still able to come together and stay... [60Frames]

Vote For Change: Saul Williams

2008-11-02T12:35:00.001+01:00

Saul Williams has written a poem for Vote For Change.
Check it out!

Click here for more videos from Vote For Change.

"Dear History,
For too long have I pondered your meaning, memorized dates of battles, years of servitude, decades of injustice, named eras after movements, mourned the extinction of species, cursed founding fathers, worn vintage suits and cloaked myself with references of your hold on me.

I have walked through museums wondering how it is that greatness had lived and died all before my time. Parts of me feared becoming great because it seemed to include a price of death and a postmortem glory that my memory could never resurrect. I've stared at paintings dying to catch glimpses of the painter, closed my eyes to listen to songs that drunken ghosts dance to, and all the while I've fought to FREE the present to BECOME.

In 1995, I stood with poets in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, barking metaphors at the new moon of the summer solstice wedging words into it's craters, sewing seeds through nightly wind.

In 1996, I forced the ocean back with words, fathered planets, climbed pyramids, and began to decipher the sirens song to conjure the dream-filled Children of the Night.

In 1997, I stood with prisoners in our nations capitol bending bars with the power of thought as wordsmiths served sentences and Hip Hop diddy-dandified itself: stealing golden calves from the Old Testament to smuggle into the lavish crib of Pontius Pilate for it's birthday party

In 1998, I swallowed fear and sun-danced on film reels, projecting a me that had not been into a me that ever shall be.

And HERE I stand, ten years the difference and witness to changing hands.

Dear History,
I beat you. I stand a generator of generations bearing witness to a world that we are holding accountable for past actions. Me and my friends, we're changing our diets, re-inventing marriage, check-mating capitalism, re-defining ethics, replacing cruelty with compassion, and have sworn not to re-elect the sins of the father.

We are casting our votes for so much more than a lesser of evils, but for change, and greater insight, for wisdom out of the mouths of babes, for races that bleed into ONE.

Dear History,
You are behind us and we are no longer looking back. We are standing on the threshold of new times, new days, new worlds, and charging forward without battle cry or trumpet, while cynicism, apathy, and cowardice take their place beside you, behind us.

Dear History,
We no longer believe in you. We have invested our our thoughts and dreams into the present moment and opportunity to shift our reality into one that does not resemble your dog-eared books.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have dared to dream and on the necks of those who have wasted their time and ours proclaiming a past past its prime.

Dear History,
Blitz! It's my turn now. You can have your mounds of flesh, leather boots, cannons and sabers, nooses and guillotines, warships and fighter planes, trails of tears and blood, genocides, dungeons and dragons, ghost stories and fairy tales..........

Come on guys! Help me out! ~ Saul"

Flight Of The Conchords

2008-10-28T13:25:00.001+01:00

Another couple of comedy videos from the brilliant Flight of the Conchords' TV series. You can download the entire Season 1 on BitTorrent using this torrent. You can also find a free videocast on the iTunes Store.

[Flight Of The Conchords - Business Time]

[Flight Of The Conchords - Inner City Pressure]

Ugly Billy's Docu-blog-umentary

2008-10-28T10:23:00.001+01:00

I rarely watch any vlogs, except when I discover something as hilarious as Ugly Billy. I'm including a bunch of videos, if you like them you can get the rest of them right here.

[Ugly Billy - My Girlfriend]

[Ugly Billy - My Mouth]

[Ugly Billy - How I Got My Name]

[Ugly Billy - My Docu-blog-umentary]

Paavoharju "Laulu Laakson Kukista"

2008-10-23T00:19:00.001+02:00

Artist: Paavoharju
Album: Laulu Laakson Kukista
Label: Fonal
Release date: 14 May 2008
Genre: Rock/Electronic
Style: Freak Folk/Experimental
RIYL: Múm, CocoRosie

Tracklisting:
01. Pimeänkarkelo
02. Kevätrumpu
03. Tuoksu Tarttuu Meihin
04. Italialaisella Laivalla
05. Alania
06. Uskallan
07. Ursulan Uni
08. Kirkonväki
09. Salainen Huone
10. Tyttö Tanssii
11. Sumuvirsi
12. Untitled
Total running time: 35' 03"

[Paavoharju - Open MySpace page]

[Paavoharju - Kirkonväki - Video Clip]

"For any band with the willingness or capability to write actual tunes, critics and fans are apt to see anything else-- interludes, instrumentals, experiments-- as a digression. I understand and partially accept that this is what you are choosing to do when you are not singing me a song. These are the aural equivalents of John Steinbeck's turtle, often treated with the indifference and puzzlement afforded the itinerant reptile in your average high school book report; folks were known to edit off the ambient bits of even Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album renowned for its meld of song and abstraction. Finnish collective Paavoharju are obstinate in their attempts to buck this trend, scattering Europop, pastel electronics, and woolen drones like a tossed deck of Bicycle playing cards. The greatest achievement of Paavoharju's Laulu Laakson Kukista, though, is not its dexterous balance of song and sound but the way it invests you as heavily in field recordings, dub workouts, and quasi-classical think pieces as in the band's foreign-language hookmaking.

Ostensibly a "songs" album, Laulu only gradually reveals their scarcity: count six using the standard "Could I maybe put this on a mixtape for my coworkers if, in fact, my coworkers were into entropic Nordic dance-pop?" benchmark. In place of half of a classic pop album, Laulu doesn't redefine out-music so much as find clever and inventive ways to incorporate it. Like its predecessor-- Paavoharju's 2005 debut Yhä Hämärää-- Laulu opens with "Pimeänkarkelo", a track that ceases to be an "intro" around the two minute mark and carries on for twice that anyway, ultimately serving as a palate cleanser for the surprisingly tart headrush of "Kevätrumpu". Kinetic synths and lovingly cheesed-out drums bleat and whir like dancin' music at a 1992 rollerblade disco. A stressed, sexed female voice coos and circles and punches like she's got Madonna's biceps but not those under-eye bags. And then...variations on a plinky piano melody in the form of "Tuoksu Tarttuu Meihin", which mulls and ponders amid a static curtain. When the band later remembers the melody on the album's two shortest tracks they feel less like interludes and more like rounding back to an earlier conversation after a thorough and fulfilling detour.

Downtempo dub. Song. Weird pastel electronica. Song. Laulu is structured much like Yhä Hämärää and the line between should be drawn using confidence, or perhaps perseverance. Mulish is too ugly a word for Laulu, whose compositions are stubbornly given room to flower and expand but are always appropriately reined; instead let's say that Paavoharju have a well-developed internal clock, or are otherwise familiar with "The Ugly Duckling". "Kirkonväki" outgrows its watery piano and malfunctioning click-track to blossom into a goth-rock prom, replete with organs in waltz-time stumble. "Uskallan" features a male lead so clear-throated and dramatic that the song sounds like one of the early 90s Latin-American hits that increasingly populate Chicago's jukeboxes. "Sumuvirsi", a rhythm-less, female-led hymn whose second-most prominent sound is a cackling raven, hues closest to the psych-folk traditional to Fonal's roster, but even it seems more theatrical and dramatic, like Paavoharju have been taking their cues both from Eleanoora Rosenholm and high-school drama productions.

The tiny honking synths that augment the rusty guitars of "Tyttö Tanssii" suggest a more literal reading of the Bicycle metaphor from above: a hill of two-wheelers, disheveled rubber, tassels, and bells. Laulu connotes this youth, motion, and playfulness in various states of repair and construction, and it does so by alternating well-formed, multi-faced pop songs with abstract head-scratchers, each component as warmly evocative and strangely necessary as the last. " [Pitchfork]

[Download.Buy]

Babe, Terror "Babe, Terror"

2008-10-21T09:39:00.000+02:00

Artist: Babe, Terror
Album: Babe, Terror [EP]
Label: Unsigned
Release date: 5 September 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental
RIYL: Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan

Tracklisting:
01. Winnie Peg From Winipooh
02. My Olympic Films 1980
03. Mount Dorothy
04. Nasa, Goodbye
05. Os Santos
Total running time: 29' 06"

[Babe, Terror - Open MySpace page]

[Babe, Terror - Nasa, Goodbye - Video Clip]

"If you are a fan of either No Age or Animal Collective, or wish there were an act that fell between those points, you may enjoy Babe, Terror, a one-man band from São Paulo. Mr. Terror is not of a piece with much of the music posted here, where catchy tunes and perceptible timekeeping are the order of the day. Babe, Terror speaks to my love of a certain kind of noise. Because this music doesn’t involve form in the way verse-chorus songs do, I have a hard time pinning down the variables. There’s usually a drone involved, bits and bobs pop up, and things move at a leisurely pace. But that’s an equally good description of terrible music, so don’t write it down. The Babe, Terror song (song?) “Nasa Goodbye” on his MySpace page does the trick, whatever it is. (Insert struggling metaphor here: an birdhouse caught in a flatbed scanner; a dress fitting inside a wind tunnel filled with acorns; etc.)

I e-mailed Mr. Terror, and his response is below. I like the fact that he introduces himself only after introducing his neighborhood:

"I live in Perdizes, a quarter with great contemporary hippie and (old) Italian influence in the city of São Paulo. One of the major Brazilian soccer teams, Palmeiras, which was established by the Italian community in São Paulo, is settled there, four blocks down from my home.

There are some pretty odd places in this neighborhood, places that seem to have been forgotten by the rest of the city, tiny hidden spaces, and ramps that would freak out even the most daring skate rider. Most of all, it is a beautiful, mystical and peaceful neighborhood, an inspiration for some of my musical ideas. I am Babe, Terror. My name is Claudio and I’m twenty-eight years old. “Terror” could be roughly translated a “horror” in English.

Babe, Terror started in early 2008, mainly due to my desire to make some homemade music, to attend and to give sense to this stage in my life. It was a simple and irrational musical impulse, which then became a conscious effort of creating music for people (me included) to listen to on a really cold Saturday afternoon, at home, through some big earphones. Therefore I began trying to create a kind of “musical fiction”: stories about love, childhood, love during childhood, and memories, which are told though the voices of those fictional characters within the songs. These ideas remind me of the meaning of the Portuguese word for “horror.” A kind of horror in a poetical and lyrical sense, though.

I make my music in a really homemade, crafty way. Every sound is based in some hand clapping, table beating, voice distortion, microphone, digital effects."" [Sasha Frere-Jones]

[Download]

The Remote Viewer "I Can't Believe It's Not Better"

2008-10-19T14:36:00.001+02:00

Artist: The Remote Viewer
Album: I Can't Believe It's Not Better
Label: Mobeer
Release date: July 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient Pop/Downtempo
RIYL: Epic45, The Boats, Marsen Jules

Tracklisting:
01. Untitled
02. Untitled
03. Untitled
04. Untitled
05. Untitled
06. Untitled
07. Untitled
08. Untitled
09. Untitled
10. Untitled
Total running time: 39' 32"

[The Remote Viewer - Open MySpace page in a new window]

"It's been over 3 years since the Remote Viewer's last album "Let your Heart Draw A Line" so it's been quite a wait - but from the instant you start playing this amazing set of tracks you find yourself comforted by the familiar yet forever beguiling sound this band makes. Delicate percussive underlays, pops and whirrs, tinkling melodies, banjo strums, loose piano arrangements and an assortment of found sounds mingle in with deep, almost gargantuan basslines that accompany many of the Remote Viewer's finest tracks. There are some surprising treats in store too - with band member Andrew Johnson allowing his singing voice to be heard properly for the first time in years, while faithful family member Nicola Hodgkinson contributes some of her vocal magic to proceedings. With packaging to die for (it took the label endless late nights to get all the elements together - more or less everything has been hand made) we're thinking that this is one of the most beautiful and sublime releases we've laid our hands on in a while." [Boomkat]

[Kudos to idm trade for this link.]

[Download.Sold Out]

Four Tet "Ringer"

2008-10-19T14:35:00.000+02:00

Artist: Four Tet
Album: Ringer [EP]
Label: Domino
Release date: 21 April 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno
RIYL: Pantha Du Prince, Efdemin, Lawrence

Tracklisting:
01. Ringer
02. Ribbons
03. Swimmer
04. Wing Body Wing
Total running time: 31' 33"

[Four Tet - Open MySpace page in a new window]

[Four Tet - Smile Around The Face - Video Clip]

[Four Tet - She Moves She - Video Clip]

"Four Tet returns with four tracks of techno (not techno). The Ringer mini album is a 32 minute, four-track excursion into the kind of wide-open spaces you might find if you set out to make techno with an afrobeat/krautrock sensibility.

Ringer locks together gloriously rich synthesizer arpeggios; ‘Wing Body Wing’ slips from crisp clusters of disco percussion to Steve Reich polyrhythms; and in between are another two euphoric ripples of sound, ‘Ribbons’ and ‘Swimmer’. These are tracks that make you think of Berlin – Dakar – Detroit - but they could only have been made in London. All four are headphone epics, but are mixed in such a way you know you have to hear them at Plastic People or The End.

The techno heartbeat comes from Kieran Hebden’s regular DJ residences over the last couple of years – but also from his ongoing collaborations with legendary jazz drummer Steve Reid. Whether in the studio or live, Kieran and Steve often click into the kind of deep 4/4 grooves that can depart in any direction with a little adjustment.

Ringer carries that minimal pulse over into Four Tet, and while Kieran’s trademark recuttings of jazz breaks may be less in evidence, his feel for harmony and melody is, as always, unmistakable." [Domino]

[Kudos to nodata.tv for this link.]

[Download.Buy]
[password: no-datta.blogspot.com]

Max Tundra "Parallax Error Beheads You"

2008-10-08T01:35:00.000+02:00

Artist: Max Tundra
Album: Parallax Error Beheads You
Label: Domino
Release date: 20 October 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro Pop/Experimental
RIYL: Psapp, Tunng

Tracklisting:
01. Gum Chimes
02. Will Get Fooled Again
03. Which Song
04. My Night Out
05. Orphaned
06. Nord Lead Three
07. The Entertainment
08. Number Our Days
09. Glycaemic Index Blues
10. Until We Die
Total running time: 41' 47"

[Max Tundra - Open MySpace page in a new window]

[Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again - Video Clip]

[Cooking With Max Tundra - Interview]

About Max Tundra by Owen Pallett
(Final Fantasy, ex-Arcade Fire, Last Shadow Puppets arranger)

"Max and I met in Barcelona in 2005 at Primavera Sound. His slot was at 4am. He put on a mask, wrapped himself up in tape, and played forty minutes of music made mostly using Amiga sample tracker software from the late 1980s. There was virtuosic melodica playing, Pointer Sisters-style singing, and an eight-minute version of “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound Of Music. I was wasted and ended up passing out on a beach in my underwear. When the sun rose, I woke up with dried merengue and sand glued to my hair, and in a daze, I realized that I had just witnessed nothing less than the best music performance of my life.

What sets Max Tundra apart from any other band in the world is his attention to detail. This album is impossibly full of ideas, seeking out every imaginable sound in the world and giving each their own curtain call. When you listen to this album, you'd think that it was made by an eccentric millionaire, with every name-brand pop music producer in the world contributing their own two seconds of material. Upon closer inspection, you'd realize that it's been six years since “Mastered By Guy At The Exchange”; in that time, Max probably hasn't had a single good night's sleep.

I can't compare this record to any record I've ever heard before. Even Max's previous records are a distant echo. It is dance music, it is discourse, it is teen sex comedy, it is a video game, it is a dance troupe, it is a thirteen course meal with Amontillado. It is shock and awe. Listen and be humbled." [Domino]

[Download.Buy]

The Bug "London Zoo"

2008-09-15T16:21:00.004+02:00

Artist: The Bug
Album: London Zoo
Label: Ninja Tune
Release date: June 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dubstep
RIYL: Boxcutter, Kode 9, Burial

Tracklisting:
01. Angry
02. Murder We
03. Skeng
04. Too Much Pain
05. Insane
06. Jah War
07. Fuckaz
08. You & Me
09. Freak Freak
10. Warning
11. Poison Dart
12. Judgement
Total running time: 37' 12"
[MP3s courtesy of Allan's World of Music]

[The Bug - Open MySpace page in a new window]

[The Bug - Skeng - Video Clip]

"All the great British writer/producers of the past two decades have found their own trademark equilibrium between guest vocals and backing tracks. Massive Attack's first three albums all achieved this, as did Tricky's. All three Leila albums come to their own unique internal understanding, and the Chemical Brothers have never lost the knack of integrating a wide range of co-conspirators into a coherent scheme. But rarely has such a formidable array of vocal talent been so effectively marshalled as on this third album by the Bug, aka veteran noise artisan Kevin Martin.

From the subterranean rumble of Roll Deep Crew alumnus Flow Dan to the elasticated larynx of Roots Manuva helpmeet Ricky Ranking, London Zoo provides the perfect showcase for its colourful menagerie of MCs and singers. And the Bug's no-nonsense clank and grind production fosters a rare intensity of focus on this album's higher purpose, which is to take the eloquence of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Michael Smith's Eighties dub-poetry, and blast it into digital hyperspace.

It's probably fair to say that the UK dance subcultures that yield the richest musical harvests tend to be those whose creative terrain is most extensively irrigated by Britain's reggae tradition. And while dubstep started out feeling like a retreat from the upfront personal drama of grime, into a vague ambient netherworld of noodling sub-bass, London Zoo confirms its welcome drift into dub's turbulent inner space.

From the Taliban to Hurricane Katrina, this album's lyrical concerns fall on the darker side of doom-laden. But when you're living through times that make the Book of Revelations look like Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack, it's reassuring to hear music with the courage to face up to that. And from the mordant humour lurking in the rhyme scheme of Killa P and Flow Dan's 'Skeng' ('Evil... Worse... Nurse... Hearse') to Tippa Irie's commonsensical summing up of George Bush's betrayal of New Orleans ('America is a big superpower/They should have been there within the hour'), London Zoo puts a 21st-century twist on reggae's Babylonian rhetoric.

The rampant accessibility of the Bug's new music will come as just as much of a surprise to those who have followed Martin's cacophonous career since the halcyon days of God or Techno Animal, as it will to those for whom the idea of a British Bill Laswell means absolutely nothing. In its own apocalyptic fashion, London Zoo abounds with inspired pop touches. Like the way Warrior Queen's 'Insane' lapses into her own magnificently out-of-tune interpretation of Tears For Fears' 'Mad World', or Tippa Irie's 'Angry' starts out as something Xenomania might come up with for Girls Aloud. But it's in daring to ask the big questions like 'How did we get here, and where do we go now?' that this record's rage-filled exuberance evokes the spirit of such classic state-of-the-world addresses as Specials, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Black Flag's Damaged." [The Observer]

[Download.Buy]

Lindstrøm "Where You Go I Go To"

2008-09-11T19:50:00.000+02:00

Artist: Lindstrøm
Album: Where You Go I Go To
Label: Smalltown Supersound/Feedelity
Release date: 18 August 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Disco/Downtempo
RIYL: Lopazz, Bjørn Torske, Hercules & Love Affair

Tracklisting:
01. Where You Go I Go Too
02. Grand Ideas
03. The Long Way Home
Total running time: 55' 06"

[Lindstrøm - Open MySpace page in new window]

[Lindstrøm - The Long Way Home (Prins Thomas Edit) - Video Clip]

[Lindstrøm - Interview]

"Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is pictured with an ear-to-ear grin on the cover of his first proper album, and on the strength of it, he has every reason to considering he has just produced the most ecstatic, uplifting and bloody perfect electronic record in years. End of.

Lindstrøm has been making serious waves all the way down from his native Norway to the coolest dance floors in Europe and beyond for some time now with his highly personal take on classic disco, fed on big dollops of Giorgio Moroder and Cerrone and seasoned with warm analogue electronics a la Ash Ra Tempel/Klaus Schulze. Lindstrøm’s first foray into the music scene dates back to 2003, and since, he has released a number of EPs, which were compiled into an album, It’s A Feedelity Affair, in 2006, an album with Prins Thomas in 2005, and has also been spotted remixing anyone from LCD Soundsystem to The Killers.

With Where You Go I Go Too, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm chose a very different path to the one he has graced until now. While his trademark electronic sound more than ever forms the backbone of this record, he has opted here to develop his tracks much beyond what any twelve inch allows and created a magical journey which stretches over just under an hour, with the title track clocking at almost thirty minutes alone. In fact, Where You Go is haunted by the ghosts of Cerrone’s seminal 1977 third album Supernature and Manuel Göttsching’s 1973 Inventions For Electric Guitar and 1984 monumental E2-E4. Adopting a format that has been commonly used by Göttsching or Klaus Schulze over the years, Lindstrøm places his three tracks so there is a continuous flow of music and sound throughout the album. More than simply fading each track into the next, the pieces actually feels as they are intricately linked. Soundscapes spill over and the pace and overall mood remain pretty constant throughout.

From the initial calm brushes of synthetic soundwaves and reversed guitar which linger over the first few minutes of the opening track rises a highly polished sequencer feast which remains at the heart of the piece for pretty much its all length. Over it, Lindstrøm applies occasional electronic riffs which progress in smooth plateaux while an arpeggio develops in the background. Around the seventeen minute mark, the track reaches a clearing where the beat breaks for a few minutes to reveal rich atmospheric sonic layers. Interestingly, it is at this point that the soundscape is at its most abundant, and when Lindstrøm returns to the fully patterned sequences of earlier, he does so with much more bravado.

Where You Go slips almost imperceptibly into Grand Ideas, the shortest of the three compositions, their boundaries would be totally none existent if it wasn’t for the rhythmic canvas of the former piece progressively fizzling out into nothingness. Grand Ideas contrast with its predecessor by kicking much sooner into place and setting out its overall remit pretty much from the start. After a burst of reversed analogue electronics, the beat settles the score, left bare at first but soon surrounded by increasingly more overwhelming layers of sounds, including what sounds like a choir at one point. The sixteen minute epic The Long Way Home, which concludes, is another journey through blissful electronic sequenced textures, but it opens with a looped formation very reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching’s guitar patterns. After a first section, Lindstrøm strips his piece almost to the bone, only leaving a distant clatter to fill the space for a moment, then progressively builds up momentum again until a crystal-clear melody provides a lasting rush of energy and gets the piece back on track.

Lindstrøm set out to create something fresh and unique and it is very much what he has achieved with Where You Go I Go Too. No content of producing one of the most unashamedly electronic records in years, he has managed to capture the essence of electronic music as it was made over thirty years ago while still sounding utterly futuristic. Far from being overwhelming, his dense layering of sounds and his overall vision makes this record one of the most exhilarating offering you’re likely to hear in a very long time." [themilkfactory]

[Download.Buy]

Adem "Takes"

2008-05-29T18:20:00.001+02:00

Artist: Adem
Album: Takes
Label: Domino
Release date: 12 May 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock
RIYL: James Yorkston & The Athletes, Sun Kil Moon, Andrew Bird

Tracklisting:
01. Bedside Table [Bedhead cover]
02. Oh My Lover [PJ Harvey cover]
03. Slide [Lisa Germano cover]
04. Loro [Pinback cover]
05. Hotellounge (Be The Death Of Me) [dEUS cover]
06. To Cure A Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song [Aphex Twin cover]
07. Tears Are In Your Eyes [Yo La Tengo cover]
08. Starla [Smashing Pumpkins cover]
09. Gamera [Tortoise cover]
10. Unravel [Björk cover]
11. Invisible Man [The Breeders cover]
12. Laser Beam [Low cover]
Total running time: 50' 48"

[Adem - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Adem - Hotellounge (Be The Death Of Me) - Live]

"Describing ‘Takes’, Adem has the following to say: "Making a covers record is like making a mixtape – how much time, love, effort and heartache is invested into side A alone? How to go about selecting the right message, the right combination, the new, the old, and the breadth of music? It’s a chance to show your influences and give people an idea of where your taste comes from. I’ve had to ignore entire genres and decades of music that should be on here; it’s just a glimpse – I hope you enjoy the view."

I’d been playing other peoples songs in my live shows for some time; they were stripped-down to basics, always me and a single instrument. On tour I’d been constantly asked for recordings of the tracks, of which I had none. At the start of 2007 I decided to go into the studio to try to document them. I wanted to capture the simplicity and atmosphere of the versions that I had been performing.

After having recorded these first few tracks, I decided to continue and make a full album, expanded, with more production. I enjoyed working quickly and instinctively - decisions that I would normally think important enough to consider over a couple of days were being made instantly, and constantly. Listening for gaps, I would arrange each track as it went along, its shape being gradually moulded and revealed. Whilst recording the double bass, I’d imagine a glockenspiel line, then a part for wood block or harmonium and I’d be hearing more as I recorded those. Layer followed layer. Takes, indeed.

At this point I decided to focus the remit of the record and only include music that was released from 1991 to 2001 – pretty informative years for me. It was difficult to pass over some of the tracks I’d been working on, but I felt that the record would be more focused and relevant. There’s no drum kit on this record, a floor tom and a legion of shaky and bangy things make up for it. I play a lot of instruments I’ve not featured before – Grand piano, vibraphone, an ebow (on loads of instruments it’s not designed for), a wurlitzer electric piano, appalachian dulcimer, violins among others. They all fit nicely with the usual acoustic guitars, double bass, hamoniums, glockenspiels, backpacker guitar, ukulele, banjolele, autoharp, bells and miscellaneous found stuff like cups and bike locks. I’m not brilliant at them all, but just good enough to not have to wait for someone else to come and then wait some more while I explain how I imagine it to be and then wait for them to do it…

In making this record I wanted to reference a specific portion of some of the music that has influenced me and that I’d loved and to present it in such a way that joined the dots between the original and my music. It was incredibly difficult to select tracks and in some cases I decided to combine a couple of my favourites by the same artist – Bedside Table ends with the end section of another Bedhead song from a later record, The Aphex Twin track combines the music of one track with the singing from a second. For these and other alterations I had to get permission from the various artists, all of who were very considerate and helpful. Thanks to all the bands and songwriters featured on this record from whose songs and music I’ve Taken.”" [Domino]

[Download.Buy]

Vetiver "Thing Of The Past"

2008-05-29T17:28:00.000+02:00

Artist: Vetiver
Album: Thing Of The Past
Label: FatCat
Release date: 13 May 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock
RIYL: Devendra Banhart, Michael Hurley, Vashti Bunyan

Tracklisting:
01. Houses
02. Roll On Babe
03. Sleep A Million Years
04. Hook & Ladder
05. To Baby
06. Road To Ronderlin
07. Lon Chaney
08. Hurry On Sundown
09. The Swimming Song
10. Blue Driver
11. Standin'
12. I Must Be In A Good Place Now
Total running time: 46' 36"

[Vetiver - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Vetiver: live at the Troubadour, West Hollywood, CA.

"Having just released a new album of covers, A Thing of the Past, Andy Cabic of Vetiver sat down with us to chat about how the album came to be, as well as what it was like working with Michael Hurley and Vashti Bunyan.

They're performing an unreleased, brand new song, "Another Reason to Go," from their untitled upcoming album of originals."]

Review:

"Generally for a rock band of at least semiserious intentions, the time for a covers album is when it has grown established and a little confused: its 4th or 5th or 10th record, say. Third is a little soon.

But Vetiver, from San Francisco, is basically a folk group with amps and drums, and covering other people’s songs isn’t a grand statement; it’s a folk ritual, a means of dissemination and cross-pollination. “Thing of the Past,” its third album, renders faithful versions of very obscure songs in their own style, which is Vetiver’s style anyway: late 1960s and early 1970s settled, meditative, West Coast electric folk-rock. The record is super studied, but never bloodless. And it’s much better than that sounds.

Andy Cabic, the band’s leader, doesn’t just choose, for example, a lesser-known Neil Young song. Instead he’s chosen a song whose original iteration contained possibly Mr. Young’s most obscure guest appearance: “Houses,” from Elyse Weinberg’s album “Elyse” (1968). Vetiver’s version is sweet and centered, careful and musical, a balance between larking and scholarship. I can’t quite understand how the band pulled it off.

Such is the case all the way through the album. “To Baby” by Biff Rose; “Lon Chaney,” by Garland Jeffreys; “Hurry on Sundown,” by Hawkwind; “Sleep a Million Years,” by Dia Joyce. (Who is Dia Joyce? I looked her up online and found almost nothing.) Somehow this is not a precious or pretentious record; these versions are delicate and sturdy at the same time. And the band recruits a few of its singer-songwriter heroes, Vashti Bunyan and Michael Hurley, from its favorite era. Mr. Cabic’s voice sounds contemporary with theirs, a little like Doug Yule’s, from the Velvet Underground.

Vetiver centers itself on slow, reliable grooves and drones; it finds the meat of a song and doesn’t grandstand. And yet the record so clearly follows Mr. Cabic’s pleasure principle that it short-circuits the good reasons not to make something like this." [New York Times]

[Download.Buy]

Animal Collective "Water Curses"

2008-05-26T20:44:00.000+02:00

Artist: Animal Collective
Album: Water Curses [EP]
Label: Domino
Release date: 5 May 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental Rock
RIYL: Panda Bear, Grizzly Bear, The Beach Boys

Tracklisting:
01. Water Curses
02. Street Flash
03. Cobwebs
04. Seal Eyeing
Total running time: 18' 05"

[Animal Collective - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Animal Collective - Water Curses - Video Clip]

[Animal Collective - Taste - Take-Away Shows]

"The journey on which Animal Collective embarked some years ago has taken them from the thoroughly experimental to the surprisingly straightforward without ever going about it the easy way. In recent years, their records have become more melodic and song-based. Their last couple of inputs for Fat-Cat swapped the burning exuberance of early records for much more structured and elegant records. Last year’s Strawberry Jam album, the collective’s first full length release on Domino, showed that, although the band have polished their act, they remained as inventive with their music and have developed a truly unique sound.

Following the all-out pop effervescence of Strawberry Jam, Water Curses catches the band in a much reflective mood, their colourful songs stripped down, leaving vocals and melodies exposed. Three of the four tracks including on this EP were recorded during the Strawberry Jam sessions, but the mood is closer to the most contemplative moments of Feels or Sung Tongs. Water Curses, which opens, is perhaps the closest to the kaleidoscopic rhetoric of the album, especially in its mid section, but here, the guitars are more discreet, bubbling gently in the background, and the electronics, while still much present, only provide surface atmospherics, leaving Avey Tare’s vocals to jump around the hypnotic beat like a mountain torrent in spring. With Street Flash, Cobwebs and Seal Eyeing, Animal Collective drift further into peaceful mode, creating surprisingly tamed motifs over sparse arrangements. The former is almost entirely based on treated guitar and voice, with crowd noises populate the backdrop, stretching over nearly seven minutes of atmospheric pop. On Cobweb, the band rely primarily on light percussions to guide Tare’s vocals, with distorted guitars adding grit on the second half of the song. Of the four songs collected here, Seal Eyeing is the barest and curls around the desolate brushes of a lone piano.

Animal Collective have got into the habit of following albums with EPs that offer a glimpse into a different side of the band, and Water Curses is no different. Collecting some of the most reflective songs the band have released, this EP may surprise by its peaceful settings, but the music is as vibrant and essential as ever." [themilkfactory]

[Download.Buy]

Atlas Sound "Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel"

2008-05-26T01:45:00.001+02:00

Artist: Atlas Sound
Album: Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Label: Kranky
Release date: 19 February 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental Rock/Shoegazing/Lo-Fi
RIYL: Excepter, My Bloody Valentine

Tracklisting:
01. A Ghost Story
02. Recent Bedroom
03. River Card
04. Quarantined
05. On Guard
06. Winter Vacation
07. Cold As Ice
08. Scraping Past
09. Small Horror
10. Ready, Set, Glow
11. Bite Marks
12. After Class
13. Ativan
14. Let The Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel
Total running time: 50' 10"

[Atlas Sound - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"In his day job as front man of Deerhunter, Bradford Cox exhibits a plethora of musical psyches that make for the most flabbergasting of split personalities that one band can have when speaking of the structure variety each song contains. Even though their heady brew of ethos makes for some of the most impending of avant punk, Cox has stepped aside for a second and taken up the Atlas Sound moniker on what is an ostentatious pop sojourn into his creative aesthetic. In the end, saying that he merely pushes the envelope would be an understatement.

The album is a mostly disparate concoction of wheezing drum machines and crisp layers of cinematic modulations intertwined with Cox's lethargic melodies. Cold and sweet all at once while perched atop a reef of moody Krautrock, Let the Blind Lead has a progression that melts more than it floats.

The mixing skills from Brain Foote of label mates Nudge is spot on in how the assortment of vibraphones, African bells, glockenspiels, dulcimers and metallaphones are all but vaporized with the pulp set aside so that their sounds seep out like hissing gases of Eno druthers. One could say that it's holistic when listened to from beginning to end but not in a crunchy way. Never has an artist cut something with a catatonic vibe that is all so liberating, thanks in part to Cox's dulcet vocals and smelting polyrhythms, which mostly serve as the album's core of sluggish tempos. Since time immemorial the term "ocean floor droning" has been used to coin music similar to this but Atlas Sound is a close parallel to the Blade Runner soundtrack having the artiest of indie pop scissor hand treatment being performed on it at the bottom of the Mariana Trench." [URB]

[Download.Buy]

The Dodos "Visiter"

2008-05-25T23:57:00.002+02:00

Artist: The Dodos
Album: Visiter
Label: French Kiss
Release date: 18 March 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Folk Rock
RIYL: Animal Collective, Akron/Family

Tracklisting:
01. Walking
02. Red And Purple
03. Eyelids
04. Fools
05. Joe's Waltz
06. Winter
07. It's That Time Again
08. Paint The Rust
09. Park Song
10. Jodi
11. Ashley
12. The Season
13. Undeclared
14. God?
Total running time: 59' 16"

[The Dodos - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Dodos - Fools - Video Clip]

"Duos tend to take a minimalist approach with their sound and this is almost certainly the case for bands laying a folk foundation. The most interesting bands, of course, enjoy flaunting the rules. Like the White Stripes before them, The Dodos blend a garbage pail of Americana influences to form their sound. Where the Stripes have striven for homemade arena-rock, The Dodos’ backwoods aim is far more modest yet every bit as affecting. They ditch Meg’s economy of bass and snare for throbbing backbeat thunder-claps, nix Jack’s penchant for hard rock in favour of straight-laced blues. Recorded to capture the magnetism of their live performances, the effusive Visiter has the aural effect of going to a rodeo fuelled on meths and alcohol. Whether or not this sounds like a good time is probably indicative of how you’ll come down on this band.

The Dodos tauntingly serve up feints in a country punk direction before settling back into a bluesy comfort zone. ‘Walking’ is a two-minute overture of fanciful banjo finger-picking punctuated with a male/female gospel chorus which sets a false tone to rambunctious slide guitars and tribal drumming which lies ahead. For the most part, the album was written on the road as a collaborative effort of head Dodo Bird Meric Long and percussionist Logan Kroeber. Predictably, the influence of their senior tour mates, Akron/Family, seeped through the songwriting process and The Dodos’ second album presents a far more full-bodied sound than its predecessor, Beware of the Maniacs. Somewhat surprising then The Dodos chose to sign with Frenchkiss (home of subsequent tour mates, Les Savy Fav) rather than Young God, which hopefully doesn’t infer a future collaboration with Michael Gira is forever shelved.

For their deceivingly energetic live performances, The Dodos now employ a part-time air-drummer/part-time glockenspiel in the same manner most bands use a cymbal crash on the downbeat. On the album itself, however, the glockenspiel is more effectively used as melodic ting-ting support to the bassline drumming. The band turns a half-hearted ballad on ‘Jodi’ into a personal affirmation with “We can do this on our own” repeated as the music builds to crescendo. Although there is no question Long is a guitar virtuoso, I would love to see the look on his high school band teacher’s face as he mistreats the trombone through an echo box on the album’s centrepiece, ‘Winter’. A simple four-chord turnaround on a baritone ukulele alternates with muted horns and hand claps which have to make Zach Condon a little bit jealous.

The music has an unconstrained urgency about it, almost wishing itself someplace else. Fans and critics alike will point to this as what they like/dislike about the album depending on which side of the fence they’re sitting. ‘It’s That Time Again’ is a New Orleans funeral march which segues into a finger-picking volcano on ‘Paint The Rust’. On the latter, it’d be almost impossible not to dredge up a platter-two Physical Graffiti comparison where rock ‘n’ roll and the blues meet in an awkward head-on collision. A toy piano and echo microphone vocals carry ‘The Seasons’’ melancholy until rapid-fire drums, guitar distortions, and random screaming deliver a final salvation. The album could very well end here, on a sombre note, but the band instead decides to leave things with an air of uncertainty. ‘God?’ chants “I know, I know”, but it’s clear by this time Long really hasn’t a clue, the chorus morphs to “Oh no, oh no” and, as the album builds to its final climax, mournful horns couple with backing moans and groans suggesting that “We die, we die” isn’t really all that frightening a concept after all. Our nervous laughter meets Long’s joyous chuckle halfway and everybody is feeling pretty good about things as the album cuts out.

Visiter has a hidden treasure aspect implying future generations may be more willing to appreciate this album. The syncopated rhythms of The Dodos don’t always choose the textbook play, utterly paranoid about letting staleness creep into their work. If the frenetic pace is often overtly taxing, you’ll come out of the exercise feeling stronger whether you like it or not. Luckily, if you do, there’s always the repeat button to run through Visiter again. You can rest wearily assured this won’t be the last you’ll hear of this band." [Drowned In Sound]

[Download.Buy]

Frightened Rabbit "The Midnight Organ Fight"

2008-05-09T21:46:00.000+02:00

Artist: Frightened Rabbit
Album: The Midnight Organ Fight
Label: FatCat
Release date: 14 April 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Folk Rock
RIYL: The Twilight Sad, Okkervil River

Tracklisting:
01. The Modern Leper
02. I Feel Better Better
03. Good Arms vs. Bad Arms
04. Fast Blood
05. Old Old Fashioned
06. The Twist
07. Bright Pink Bookmark
08. Heads Roll Off
09. My Backwards Walk
10. Keep Yourself Warm
11. Extrasupervery
12. Poke
13. Floating In The Forth
14. Who'd You Kill Now?
Total running time: 47' 54"

[Frightened Rabbit - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Frightened Rabbit - Heads Roll Off - Video Clip]

[Frightened Rabbit - Old Old Fashioned - Live Acoustic]

"Sometimes it truly is the quiet ones. Frightened Rabbit are testament to this. Two years after the (first) release of their debut album Sing The Greys, a good album but by no means a classic, and infrequent trips around the UK toilet circuit the Selkirk, Scotland-based four-piece have, from nowhere, released one of 2008’s truly great indie-pop albums. Michael Stipe, take note.
On their sophomore offering the band have shaven off the instrumental passages that snaked through their first release and created 14 blissfully simple pop songs. Opener ’The Modern Leper’ and recent single ’Heads Roll Off’ yearn for Radio 1 A-List inclusion, all witty turns of phrase and soaring, catchy choruses, and yet they still have an undeniably rustic, scruffy quality, aided by Scott Hutchinson's wailing vocals and the substitution of a bass guitar for a second acoustic guitar playing lower notes.

It is on 'I Feel Better' that this mix of cohesive songwriting and clumsy delivery is at its most potent; a decidedly up-tempo number that has the same high-octane caterwaul-led feel to it as that on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's more jaunty moments, but transposed into the near-orchestral resplendence of The Hidden Cameras.

But the beauty of The Midnight Organ Fight is that it works in any location and/or situation. It is of such a substantial quality throughout that it can last through repeated full spins on lonely train journeys through idyllic landscapes, yet still has a high enough ratio of glorious pop hooks and distinctive ideas per song to not be ruined by a click of a ‘random’ or ‘shuffle’ button.
Although this album could very well catapult Frightened Rabbit into the mainstream, and deservedly so, it is evident this is by no means intentional. The Midnight Organ Fight is neither a genuine 'safe' option for the band nor a blatant fan-base builder which obscures the band’s own charms as has been the case for fellow countrymen Biffy Clyro and (sort of – they’re based in Glasgow) Snow Patrol.

Here there can be no snobbish derision and calls of 'selling out' or playing to the average man; in creating an album showcasing the very best of the band’s talents they have created one so perfectly fit for, as Scott so vividly puts, “the soft, soft static” of popular radio. A happy coincidence, then." [Drowned in Sound]

[Download(part1.part2).Buy]

Cut Copy "In Ghost Colours"

2008-04-12T18:04:00.002+02:00

Artist: Cut Copy
Album: In Ghost Colours
Label: Modular
Release date: 22 March 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro Pop/Synth Pop
RIYL: New Order, Junior Boys, Simian Mobile Disco

Tracklisting:
01. Feel The Love
02. Out There On The Ice
03. Lights And Music
04. We Fight For Diamonds
05. Unforgettable Season
06. Midnight Runner
07. So Haunted
08. Voices In Quartz
09. Hearts On Fire
10. Far Away
11. Silver Thoughts
12. Strangers In The Wind
13. Visions
14. Nobody Lost, Nobody Found
15. Eternity One Night Only
Total running time: 50' 30"

[Cut Copy - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Cut Copy - Lights And Music - Video Clip]

[Cut Copy - Future - Live]

"Cut Copy are set to return in 2008 with the shimmering timelessness of In Ghost Colours. Haunted with machines of the past and sounds of the future, In Ghost Colours inhabits the kind of space in time where trends are irrelevant and music is about feeling rather than following and 1969 is just as relevant as 2020.

In Ghost Colours traverses genres effortlessly, from already-anthem Hearts On Fire's epic sax-house to the noisy blissout of So Haunted. For Cut Copy the record was an exercise in drawing parallels between favourites old and new and trying to find a meeting point in between - from the vocodered robo-pop of French house to prog's soaring harmonies to the texture of shoegaze, In Ghost Colours lands at some sort of trans-galaxial intersection between these disparate planets.

This idea was something that appealed to Tim Goldsworthy, DFA's inhouse producer, programming guru, synth mogul and eventually muse for In Ghost Colours. Goldsworthy was enlisted to get nerdy on the project after a series of conversations with the band, who were admitted DFA fans, and when frontman Dan Whitford found he had found an equal to his obsession with ELO's Time record. When it was revealed that Goldsworthy had dropped out of school to follow My Bloody Valentine around England in the 80s and could pinpoint every pedal that was used for every sound on Loveless the contract was signed in blood. And so the band travelled to New York in early 2007 to spend 6 weeks tracking In Ghost Colours at DFA's Plantain Studio in the West Village, geeking out on DFA's collection of vintage analogue equipment and on an endless hunt for decent coffee.

The songs that Cut Copy had collected in the period since Bright Like Neon Love arrived in New York as promising bones of a more assured, song-based follow up. Upon encountering Goldsworthy's approach to recording, which Dan revealed involved a lot of experimentation. A lot of the time it was a matter of listening to where a track was at, then going over and picking up a random piece of gear, or messing around with pedals and filter, and seeing what you could get from it. Whether it ended up in the finished track or not, it was all a part of the process, and it was a fun and experimental one. This approach meant some sounds you hear on the record are entirely unique and impossible to replicate. From the epic trance breakdown in Far Away, to the sawtooth synth bass on Out There On The Ice, to when an old radio receiver was plugged direct into the analogue desk for Voices In Quartz, these sharp, succinct pop arrows to the heart are benefited from an array of special sonic sparkles.

The progression from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours is brazenly apparent from opening track Feel The Love, an acoustic guitar led stomp of a space rock tune, instantly unforgettable and with recognizable Cut Copy glow. Where Bright Like Neon Love was charmingly vague and hazy, In Ghost Colours is directly to the point and efficient in it's songcraft, with vocals much more apparent and Whitford's imprint all over every track. The record is sewn together with passages of woozy dreamscapes between the straight up jams." [Modular]

[Download.Buy]

Excepter "Debt Dept."

2008-04-11T14:15:00.002+02:00

Artist: Excepter
Album: Debt Dept.
Label: Paw Tracks
Release date: 25 March 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental Rock/Electro Rock
RIYL: Black Dice, Animal Collective

Tracklisting:
01. Entrance 08
02. Shots Ring
03. Kill People
04. Any And Every
05. The Last Dance
06. Greenhouse/Stretch
07. Walking Through The Night
08. Sunrise
09. Burgers [Edit]
Total running time: 43' 45"

[Excepter - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Excepter - Kill People - Video Clip]

[Excepter - Burgers - Video Clip]

"Normally, urging the listener to “kill people” repeatedly on record would lead to scores of scaremongering splashes in the national press about the latest antichrists of the music scene. That Excepter have so far escaped this fate is probably down partly to their relative obscurity when compared with other musical bete noires. Yet although the shrieking editorial writers may yet have come to notice them, the band have been beguiling and infuriating music fans for years with their off-kilter anti-pop insanity. This, their fourth release, will probably divide listeners as much as the others, but it offers some pretty perverse pleasures to those who can stomach the ride.

To imagine what this band sounds like, picture yourself walking into a music store with sections devoted to different musical genres. Now imagine being in all of those sections at the same time, and hearing the ear-splitting fusion that would result. It’s music that is almost straining itself to be new, colliding fashions and tastes to produce something that is either a racket or a mad bleeping paragon of clarity, depending on your viewpoint.

Debt Dept, their first album for Animal Collective label Paw Tracks, comes with a litany of loopy statements about destroying “the boundaries between the psychic friends network and reality television” and releasing protest songs “played in an anti-commercial style with a timeless message for today’s election-year consumer”. It’s hard to know if we are meant to take the rhetoric seriously, but it is perhaps best overlooked in favour of the music itself. Indeed, the very idea that these are protest songs is almost mockingly undermined by the string of instrumental tracks on the album that work themselves out of different private puzzles. Greenhouse / Stretch, notably, could really be about anything at all, with its randomised organ patterns zipping along over a slow-moving trip-hop rhythm. Occasionally, voices growl distantly, as though sung from somewhere outside the studio walls, but the linguistic pretensions seem at best to be a neat ironic joke.

Of course, it is the music that will get the attention here, and rightly so. Excepter are almost openly lampooned for their ear-splitting inconsistency, but there is a very definite thread behind all of the tracks on this release. Hard to define easily, it could be summarised as a musical fist fight between the Beach Boys, Boogie Down Productions and the DJ at a late-night underground party for surf-rock subversives. It is defiantly retro, defiantly new, defiantly defiant – and, by definition, defiantly Paw Tracks. It is hard not to admire music as unnervingly off-beat as this, especially when everything clicks together perfectly, such as on tracks like SunriseEntrance 08. But at times the weirdness just seems laboured, as though, having run out of fresh ideas, they have just decided to monkey around in the studio and keep the tape running.

When we learn that seventeen tracks were recorded for the album, and eventually cut down to just the eight here, it almost makes sense – as though, not having room for all of them, they merely decided to stick all the songs on top of one another. This is in a way both the album’s weakness and its defining strength, and one that will no doubt continue to bewilder those who follow the band. But perseverance and an unusual proclivity for ear-hurting musical madness are probably the key here, as this is not an album that will make much sense until the listener’s natural resistances wear off. Buy it then, but don’t expect to like it much until the summer kicks in." [themilkfactory]

[Download.Buy]

Sun Kil Moon "April"

2008-04-10T21:55:00.001+02:00

Artist: Sun Kil Moon
Album: April
Label: Caldo Verde
Release date: 1 April 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock/Indie Rock
RIYL: Red House Painters, M. Ward, Smog

Tracklisting:
01. Lost Verses
02. The Light
03. Lucky Man
04. Unlit Hallway
05. Heron Blue
06. Moorestown
07. Harper Road
08. Tonight The Sky
09. Like The River
10. Tonight In Bilbao
11. Blue Orchids
Total running time: 73' 45"

Bonus Disc:
01. Tonight In Bilbao (Alt. Version)
02. The Light (Alt. Version)
03. Like the River (Alt. Version)
04. Tonight The Sky (Alt. Version)

[Sun Kil Moon - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Is there such a thing as closure? Crime writer James Ellroy’s mother was murdered when he was 10 years old, and Ellroy has spent his entire career writing his way out of it with no expectation of emotional settlement. It’s made him who he is. Chances are Mark Kozelek—formerly of Red House Painters, currently of Sun Kil Moon—will also write his way through memory and fate until the end of his days. His Ohio childhood, his classic-rock album collection, his love for the guitar, his friends and especially the death of loved ones—including the tragic passing of an important early muse—have made Kozelek the songwriter he is. He takes solace in the beautiful landscapes that surround him. He travels to faraway cities and dreams of home, and then he comes home and dreams of elsewhere.

He’s always been obsessed by longing and desire. 1992’s accomplished Red House Painters demo-tape-turned-debut-album Down Colorful Hill was a Technicolor tragedy filled with tortured romances and aching childhood memories, a perfect fit for the boutique 4AD label that released it. The young man who composed that record has changed over the years. Nothing dramatic, no abrupt refutations of his past; just a deepening, a settling into the man he has become. Kozelek’s music is now warmer, more able to reconcile its classic-rock roots within its ethereal structures. The reverb canyons and domineering vocals have given way to richer guitar textures and sweet, anguished mumbles. His songs remain personal, as likely to express shockingly candid details as to wrap them in personal symbolism only he can unravel. When Kozelek sings “I promised always through me she would shine” on April’s 10-minute centerpiece “Tonight the Sky,” you picture the man alone, howling at the moon, shaking his fists in frustration at the universe.

This sense of loneliness haunts Kozelek’s best work, and it’s in full force throughout April, arguably the finest album of his career. The word “arguably” makes me wince (just say it, dammit), but Kozelek’s work has proven over the years that it reveals itself slowly. What grabs you at first is the simple, gorgeous hook, which turns out to be a gateway drug to the deeper mysteries that power his music. When I reviewed the second and third Red House Painters albums—self-titled but known as Rollercoaster and Bridge, respectively, for their covers—in Rolling Stone in 1993, I recorded certain obvious truths (his unorthodox approach to covers, his overwhelmingly somber lyrics and melodies) but I missed the mark when it came to what I now realize is his driving force: I criticized his obsessive nature. I thought he overreached.

More than a decade later, I understand that this obsession is the core. Kozelek requires a certain amount of time and space to make magic happen. The songs require their massive lengths, hypnotic repetitions and layers of meticulous guitar licks in order for their claustrophobic minimalism to perfect its tension, as on “Heron Blue,” which takes place in a hospital where a loved one dies and the funeral hymns echo in his head. In “Lost Verses,” the album’s near 10-minute opener, Kozelek walks the streets of San Francisco, a ghost observing old friends through their windows, seeing their vulnerabilities. “I want them to know how I love them so,” he sings. He’s not yet raging at the dying of the light, but he knows he’s on the clock.

“The Light,” at nearly eight minutes, follows. The similar feel—the bucking, unhurried rhythm, the dusty electric-guitar tone and the slowly descending melody that underline the mournful, rootless sentiment of the lyrics—signifies a mature writer chasing themes within a self-defined vernacular. Kozelek never aspires to write anything as thematically grand as a “concept album,” but he consciously allows the songs to stand as epics. (Six of the album’s 11 tunes rack up at least six minutes, and nothing is short of four.) The album’s smaller pieces are no less essential. “Moorestown” remembers the idyllic days of a new relationship. “Unlit Hallway,” with the addition of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to its angelic choir, captures a hazy twilight.

In another era (the one Kozelek remembers as a teenager listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Lucky Man”), this would be a double album with a cardboard gatefold layout—to best present the artful photography—and four vinyl sides to sift through. In this age of ProTools and tightly compressed sonic ambushes where so many bands concern themselves only with loudness, Kozelek sounds nearly old-fashioned. Guitars warm up in the stereo mix and choirs hide in the record’s depths. These technical advantages make the emotional translations more effective.

The aforementioned “Tonight the Sky” chugs with a sublime Neil Young “Ohio” meets “Like a Hurricane” guitar riff that explodes during the climax, where Kozelek lays it on the line: “I woke up every morning not believing she was gone.” The guitars are thrown to the max, but then shift to near silence and settle on a one-note cry of despair. At that moment, words can’t express what the spirit has been sentenced to feel. Kozelek, however, will never stop attempting to translate it. Whether it’s the physical displacement in “Tonight in Bilbao,” where the road-weary musician travels throughout Europe only to find peace back home in San Francisco, or the shock at the realization of an emotional numbness that hides in “The Light,” Kozelek is forever doomed to seek a closure that will remain one song away from realization and forever out of reach." [Paste Magazine]

[Download(MegaUpload.RapidShare)+Bonus Disc.Buy]

Why? "Alopecia"

2008-03-19T11:05:00.000+01:00

Artist: Why?
Album: Apolecia
Label: Anticon
Release date: 11 March 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Hip Hop
RIYL: cLOUDDEAD, Subtle, 13 & God

Tracklisting:
01. The Vowels Pt. 2
02. Good Friday
03. These Few Presidents
04. The Hollows
05. Song Of The Sad Assassin
06. Gnashville
07. Fatalist Palmistry
08. The Fall Of Mr. Fifths
09. Brook & Waxing
10. A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under
11. Twenty Eight
12. Simeon’s Dilemma
13. By Torpedo Or Crohn’s
14. Exegesis
Total running time: 44' 56"

[Why? - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Picture it: a mass of energy is floating through space at an accelerated rate. The energy, when decoded by the complex circuitry of our ear canals, resembles something we recognize as musical notes. This energy, in a brilliant flash of nothing, seems to implode in on itself, wholly disappearing from the black void of space and time. It’s been sucked into the gravitational field of a black hole so immense that it dwarfs our very conception of enormity. This so-decoded musical energy is, seemingly, lost.

Oakland, California. The year is 2008. Note this. A crackle of electricity lights up the sky, and while the residents of the eighth-largest Californian metropolitan area fail to notice it, a wormhole opens up above their fair city for the slightest fraction of a millisecond, releasing the once-lost musical energy. At its constant rate of descent, the invisible mass quickly impacts the ground and spreads in a horizontal trajectory until the whole of the city is engulfed. From there, the fluent mass continues across the continent.

Sound far-fetched? Fine; you try explaining how a group like WHY? can exist in this rudimentary world.

Answering the question, nay, even making an attempt at answering “So, what do they sound like?” is deserving of a gold star. WHY? is a three-piece from Oakland, composed of beat- and word-smith Yoni Wolf, his brother Josiah, and Doug McDiarmid, joined on Alopecia by bassist Mark Erickson and Fog’s Andrew Broder. They’re really less of a black hole and more of a modified vacuum cleaner. They suck up everything along with the dirt: experimental hip-hop, indie rock, sugar-loaded pop, minimalist balladry, etc. And then, once the components are all bundled together, they flip the switch and send it all tumbling back out again and into the recording studio. More plainly, WHY? is the alphabet soup of independent music. Clever, biting, creative, intense, storied, and lurid. There’s really nothing else like it.

Alopecia, their third full-length release and second as a full band, is a darkly tinged juggernaut. 2005’s supremely wonderful but admittedly melancholic Elephant Eyelash is downright cheery in relation. The songs of Alopecia find a renewed interest from Yoni Wolf in delivering straight-up beats and rhymes alongside his more sing-songy efforts. Unsurprisingly, his styles of old and new fit together like it ain’t no joke.

Wolf isn’t in a rush to spit out his verse in a song like “Good Friday,” instead letting the lazy beat lead him through some seriously down-and-out lyrical content. At the same time, it’s considerate that Wolf plays it so that we can get a few laughs from it alongside the cringes. “The Hollows” is a masterpiece, the band’s efforts fully coalescing into a totally monstrous sound that keeps building until it bursts. The sublime opening of “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under” is a testament to WHY?’s tendency to include every type of sound imaginable and actually make it work. “Fatalist Palmistry” is the only track even approaching the bouncy demeanor of Elephant Eyelash, but with an opening tercet like “I sleep on my back/ ’Cause it’s good for the spine/ And coffin rehearsal,” you know where you’re at.

Alopecia is therapeutic for everyone involved. Wolf is bearing the darkest parts of his soul here. Sometimes they just sound so good that it’s easy to forget that. He’s asking big questions without answers, and when one gets stuck in a rut like that, well, the chances of coming out with a cheerier outlook are slim. But that’s where these songs come in. They’re a total release for Wolf, his band, and anyone who happens to listen and can’t help but be washed over in that wave of understanding. It’s not inaccurate to say that the album seriously considers mortality. Living and dying are weighed on equal scales for the first two-thirds, each seeming as peaceful and viable as the other. But there’s a dilemma in that. That black hole shows up again and Yoni Wolf stares into the very depths of it hoping to take some answer, any answer, away from it. It’s here that Alopecia finds its unified harmony.

Listening to his warbly plea in “Simeon’s Dilemma,” it’s clear Wolf has found what he was looking for. Maybe by the time the recurring refrain (“While I’m alive/ I’ll feel alive”) shows up again in “By Torpedo or Crohn’s,” even those slow to the draw will have picked up on the hints. Rest assured that it hits you in the chest like a mass of energy torpedoing through space and time: “WHY?” was a damn good question to ask." [Tiny Mix Tapes]

[Download.Buy]

Autechre "Quaristice"

2008-03-12T20:19:00.006+01:00

Artist: Autechre
Album: Quaristice
Label: Warp
Release date: 3 March 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental Techno/Ambient
RIYL: Aphex Twin, Gescom, Mouse On Mars

Tracklisting:
01. Altibzz
02. The Plc
03. Io
04. PlyPhon
05. Perlence
06. SonDEremawe
07. Simmm
08. Paralel Suns
09. Steels
10. Tankakern
11. Rale
12. Fol3
13. FwzE
14. 90101-5l-l
15. Bnc Castl
16. Theswere
17. Wnsn
18. Chenc9
19. Notwo
20. Outh9X
Total running time: 73' 16"

[Autechre - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Not counting their previous incarnations, Sean Booth and Rob Brown have operated as the highly influential Autechre since 1993. Their first two works, Incunabula and Amber, stand as touchstones for a dubiously dubbed genre that shall go unnamed for the sake of their sanity. Following in the wake of their third album, Tri-Repetae, widely considered their masterwork, subsequent releases were increasingly met with hostile critique by critic and fan. Accusations that their compositions lacked soul and meaning, that they had lost the plot, etc. began to flow fast and heavy, just as the intricacy and organization of their sounds intensified in complexity.

Tri-Repetae showed that Autechre were actively challenging their listeners, and it is no surprise that they remained in that compositional dialogue for future releases, despite critical resistance. Much like modern composers such as Xenakis or Lachenmann, these challenges are not set for effect. They are set because they seek to re-examine and explore their chosen palettes’ limitations and settings in an effort to continue the documentation of their independent voice. And what some might deem as cold and soulless, others will find new levels of effect outside of the prescribed. Ultimately, the quest and documentation of the new will rarely meet with open arms.

That said, Quaristice benefits greatly from a slight referencing of the dimly lit ambience similar to their favored releases, which will undoubtedly appeal to fans that felt their work had become overbearingly clinical. The stronger fleshing out of surroundings is evidenced immediately within the painterly washes comprising opener "Altibzz," hinting at themes mined in the past, yet surpassing them with a greater degree of sophistication in arrangement. This brooding ambience is explored throughout the album, but most notably with the streaking depth charges that criss-cross the landscape of "paralel Suns." The album is capped off with two further examinations of the ambient discipline, "Notwo" and "Outh9X," each an unsettling exploration of tone and acoustics that dwarf many works based in similar theory.

Quaristice is by no means an ambient album. Yet even within the clanking fidgety rhythms of "The Plc," for example, atmospheric tones are found streaking throughout the spatial framework, alluding to that genre’s typical signifiers. Several passages on Quaristice are staggering in this heightened balance of rhythm and surrounding ambience: "WNSN," with its tonal clusters groaning, overwhelmed by their own strength; the stuttering kick drums of "plyPhon" sending shockwaves forth into the all-consuming, cavernous setting; the frenetic "Simm," which descends into a triangular counter-clockwise motion of punctuation; and "Tankakern," which threatens to explode at its edges underneath all of the weight set into it. The whole of the release seeks to consume the entire space that it occupies.

After many detailed listens, the record feels like their strongest yet, a bold statement considering the importance of their previous works. It is a remarkable assemblage of expressive textures, with an allowance of echoes of their past to resonate from beginning to end. Composers often need to re-examine previous theories in order to move forth into new territories, and Quaristice is that simultaneous step back and forward, likely to please fans both old and new. What this album will sonically proceed is anyone’s guess — we can only hope to be prepared at that point for whatever territories that Autechre are ready to navigate and document." [Tiny Mix Tapes]

[Link removed at the request of the label.Buy]

The Helio Sequence "Keep Your Eyes Ahead"

2008-02-18T15:33:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Helio Sequence
Album: Keep Your Eyes Ahead
Label: Sub Pop
Release date: 28 January 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock/Folk Rock
RIYL: Love As Laughter, The Notwist

Tracklisting:
01. Lately
02. Can't Say No
03. The Captive Mind
04. You Can Come to Me
05. Shed Your Love
06. Keep Your Eyes Ahead
07. Back to This
08. Hallelujah
09. Broken Afternoon
10. No Regrets
Total running time: 37' 02"

[The Helio Sequence - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Helio Sequence - Everyone Knows Everyone - Video Clip]

"Brandon Summers was disenchanted at a time when he thought he’d be anything but. Following two epic, self-produced albums on Portland’s Cavity Search, The Helio Sequence had just released Love and Distance, the duo’s shimmering 2004 debut on Sub Pop. Brandon and best friend Benjamin Weikel were traversing the country with their impressive collection of synthesizers, pedals, guitars and massive amps all jam-packed into a brand new tour van (a two-seater obtained during Benjamin’s stint as the drummer for Modest Mouse). And heck, the pair had even left their day jobs at their hometown music shop in Beaverton, OR. After eight years of playing together (they met when Brandon was in middle school), The Helio Sequence had finally arrived. But after six months of tours in the U.S. and Europe with Blonde Redhead, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, and Secret Machines, Brandon’s vocal chords were severely shredded. When he lost his voice in the midst of the first batch of these dates, he was bummed but made the best of it [enter the whiskey]. Halfway through, though, he could hardly speak—let alone sing—and literally had to stop talking during daylight hours. To kill the boredom of forced silence during the day and the frustration of dissatisfying performances at night, he polished off 60 books in about as many days, beginning with Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. Upon returning to Portland, Brandon’s doctor forbade him from singing for almost two months. “I really hit the wall,” he recalls, “Going into 2005 I actually had to think, ‘If I lose my voice, what will I do?’”

Trading whiskey for Throat Coat®, Brandon taught himself vocal exercises and mic technique. He took up jogging and vowed not to be another lazy musician; from that point on, recording and practice sessions were to begin at 9am sharp. In light of such devotion, it’s not surprising The Helio Sequence regrouped and went on to record their most dynamic, extraordinary work to date. Keep Your Eyes Ahead marries the duo’s signature layered keyboards and impossibly big guitars with crisp songwriting and a newfound appreciation for minimalism. The finger picking on “Shed Your Love” is backed by exquisite strings and ambient noise, but Brandon’s serene, self-assured delivery remains front and center. While songs from the band’s early releases spanned up to 7 minutes, even the longest, lushest, catchiest track on Keep Your Eyes Ahead (fiery anthem “Hallelujah”) clocks in at 4 and a half minutes, evidence of just how refined their craft has become. Beyond the health regimen, Brandon’s brush with silence helped him deconstruct and refocus his approach to expression. Lyrics increasingly became stream of consciousness. Vocals were recorded spontaneously in bedroom closets and living rooms, which may explain the haunting urgency you hear in Brandon’s voice, especially on driving tracks like “Keep Your Eyes Ahead.” The band also took its time on the album. After the bulk of official recording was completed, a listen through all the demos and snippets on Brandon’s hard drive convinced Benjamin there were more gems in the rough (which is how both “Hallelujah” and “Keep Your Eyes Ahead,” as well as the mid-tempo “Back to This” were rediscovered and retooled).

The collective wisdom of Wikipedia currently describes The Helio Sequence as “indie electronica” (bonus points to whoever fixes that one). One listen to Keep Your Eyes Ahead, which was self-produced by the duo and then mastered by Greg Calbi (Iron and Wine, Interpol, and Paul Simon’s Graceland), confirms The Helio Sequence teem with an energy and a range that continues to defy such narrow categorization. Unapologetic pop and folk meld seamlessly to create songs that are bigger, more epic and polished than anything they’ve ever done. Keep Your Eyes Ahead is the sound of a band and a decade-old partnership that’s been invigorated. And that’s exactly how the songs will make you feel: invigorated." [Sub Pop]

[Download.Buy]

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Worn Copy"

2008-02-17T12:02:00.000+01:00

Artist: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Album: Worn Copy
Label: Paw Tracks
Release date: 2005
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Lo-Fi/Experimental Rock
RIYL: Animal Collective, Panda Bear

Tracklisting:
01. Trepanated Earth
02. Immune To Emotion
03. Jules Lost His Jewels
04. Artifact
05. Bloody! (Bagonia's)
06. Credit
07. Life in L.A.
08. The Drummer
09. Cable Access Follies
10. Creepshow
11. One On One
12. Oblivious Peninsula
13. Somewhere In Europe/Hotpink!
14. Thespian City
15. Crybaby
16. Foilly Foilbles/GOLD
17. Jagged Carnival Tours
Total running time: 76' 12"

[Ariel Pink - Jagged Carnival Tours - Video Clip]

[Ariel Pink - Thespian City - Live @ Tiny Creatures]

"Worn Copy deserves a place in a museum, stored in a vitrine and observed with hushed regard. It's indisputably a pure burst of unmatched, solitary creativity. The only question left is which one: the Folk Art Museum or the Museum of Television and Radio.

On the side of the short-wave buffs, Worn Copy is a premier example of the influence radio has had on American culture. The 75 minutes of song pastiche bear the influence of popular rock, dance, and soul from the latter half of the twentieth century, but not the clear sound of new vinyl on a hi-fi, or the blasting electricity of a live performance. This is an album written by someone whose primary source of music must have been a radio. The sounds phase in and out, their volumes changing as if the signal has briefly disappeared. The tones are fuzzy and muted, with the same lack of highs and lows that brought AM radio to its knees at the arrival of the sharper FM. Songs switch styles as abruptly as a listless hand surfing the stations.

The songwriter and musician, Ariel Pink, who created and recorded Worn Copy almost entirely on his own, mixes psychedelic '60s rock, '70s Californian jazz-funk, and '80s pop of Duran Duran and the Cars. These 8-track recordings can be both deceptively accomplished and then suddenly drop all pretense of technique, such as in the reverb-heavy "One on One", which feels like a meeting of the minds between the Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane.

Like most of us, Pink seems to have received the majority of his early exposure to popular music through radio, whether the faint sounds of college stations or the afternoon drive-time rock station. An impressive aspect of this influence is the incorporation into his songs of an essential element of commercial radio: the commercials. The track "Credit" turns a satirical commercial jingle into the song's core melodic hook, as inane and insanely unforgettable as any real one. "Cable Access Follies", a trashcan funk track with layered, bass vocals, emotionally glorifies the joys of cable TV.

His record might be a useful cultural artifact for the Smithsonian, but as an artist he clearly seems more comfortable in the realm of outsider artists rather than the gallery establishment. Pink seems almost begging to be labeled a "freak." The publicity photo that came with the CD showed Pink shirtless and strung out, his contorted face covered in what I have to assume is only stage blood. His combination of self- and mass-produced elements to create an original yet uncomfortably familiar final work makes for an easy fit with the outsider art of such visual artists as Henry Darger and Eugene Von Bruenchenheim. Like these solitary artists, Pink created hundreds of songs by himself. The lengthy Worn Copy is nothing compared to the potential magnum opus he might have arranged.

But Pink is not a freak. Outsider status is just like any other artistic authenticity debate -- cool, punk, and now freak are intangible labels that can really only be conferred posthumously. Pink is very much alive, and no longer a misunderstood loner. For one, he's enjoying some moderate recognition while still alive, something most outsider artists almost by definition never do. Darger and Bruenchenheim might never have been moved to create such vast collections of bizarre artwork if they had been given attention in their own time (Darger's drawings might easily have got him arrested, even). Like Devendra Banhart, another young singer crowned with the dubious appellation of "freak," a continuing, successful career as a musician almost instantly tarnishes the crown.

Worn Copy is a reissue of an older record, its material recorded in 2002 and 2003. His first record for Paw Tracks, The Doldrums, appeared last year but was recorded between 1999 and 2000. What can come next? The music of 1997 to 1998, or will Pink be able to return to his hermitage in California and, impervious to his recent shades of success and attention, create another epic ramble as compelling and singular as Worn Copy? I'm not sure what effect it might have on the man's sanity, but for the listener's sake I can't help but wish that he'd been left undiscovered for a few more years, able only to tune in to his own inner bandwidth for comfort." [PopMatters]

[Download(part1.part2).Buy]

The Orb "The Dream"

2008-02-06T17:59:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Orb
Album: The Dream
Label: Traffic Inc.
Release date: 29 August 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient Techno/Dub/Downtempo
RIYL: The Future Sound Of London, Orbital, Leftfield

Tracklisting:
01. The Dream (The Future Academy Of Noise, Rhythm And Gardening Mix)
02. Vuja De
03. Something Supernatural
04. A Beautiful Day
05. DDD (Dirty Disco Dub)
06. The Truth Is...
07. Phantom Of Ukraine
08. Mother Nature
09. Lost & Found
10. The Forest Of Lyonesse
11. Katskills
12. High Noon
13. Sleeping Tiger & The Gods Unknown
14. Codes
15. Orbisonia
16. Let the Music Set You Free
Total running time: 79' 56"

[The Orb - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Orb - Vuja De - Video Clip]

"The Dream sees the reunion of long-term friends and collaborators Alex Paterson and Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, working together under the Orb umbrella for the first time in fifteen years. The pair met at school in the seventies, then, while Youth gained famed as part of post punk outfit Killing Joke, Paterson followed as a roadie for the band. The pair went on to set up W.A.U.! Records and work together, alongside Jimmy Cauty, and later on Kris ‘Thrash’ Weston, on the two first Orb albums. While they remained friends over the year, it wasn’t until Youth set up a brand new studio at the end of his garden a couple of years ago that the pair began working on a new project.

Drenched in fluid dub pulses, overactive layered samples and polymorphic grooves, The Dream, introduced by the Future Academy Of Noise, Rhythm And Gardening, captures the spirit of early Orb in a way not heard since Orblivion. The lush sonic tapestry that unfolds past the guitar motif in the opening sequence of the album has the welcoming feel of a treasured retreat. As the warm pulsating bass kicks in and vocal samples burst out from all sides, wrapped up around the main melody to the point of obliterating it, the Paterson/Youth machine appears fully back in motion. The anthemic Vuja De, featuring vocal contribution from Aki Omori, who previously contributed to Cydonia, hesitate for a moment between the rich soundscapes of its predecessor and progressive pop before settling for unadulterated electronic bliss.

But it is in its middle section that The Dream really hits hard. Once the breezy formations of A Beautiful Day cleared, the album dives deeper into kaleidoscopic grooves, first with the greasy DDD (Dirty Disco Dub), then with the liquid The Truth Is…, which makes good use of a well known Orb hook . Then, it is the turn of the heavy dancehall-infused Mother Nature and ragga flavoured Lost & Found to assert the pair’s chemically fuelled dance floor credential. After that, the pair return to gentler territories and drop a series of beautiful hypnotic compositions, first on Katskills, where they combine ethnic percussions and vocal samples on ever changing patterned backdrops, then with the warm and uplifting High Noon. Codes and Orbisonia bring The Dream down to a gentle close. While the surface gloss of the former is eventually broken by erupting electronics, the peaceful nocturnal ambience of the latter echoes some of the most chilled moments of The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld.

A far cry from the desolate minimal techno of Okie Dokie, which Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann released in 2005 on German imprint Kompakt, The Dream is a lush and groovy offering which, although never reaching the heady heights of U.F.Orb, manages to show that there is life in the old beast yet." [themilkfactory]

[Download.Buy]

Clark "Turning Dragon"

2008-02-04T20:27:00.003+01:00

Artist: Clark
Album: Turning Dragon
Label: Warp
Release date: 28 January 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno/Experimental
RIYL: Mouse On Mars, Vitalic, Basement Jaxx

Tracklisting:
01. New Year Storm
02. Volcan Veins
03. Truncation Horn
04. For Wolves Crew
05. Violenl
06. Gaskarth / Cyrk Dedication
07. Ache Of The North
08. Mercy Sines
09. Hot May Slides
10. Beg
11. Penultimate Persian
Total running time: 46' 35"

[Clark - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Since he first appeared on the scene, in 2001, with his debut album, Clark has systematically upped the stakes with each new release, first by refocusing his sound essentially around electronics and gritty textures with Ceramics Is The Bomb and Empty The Bones Of You, then by refining his template and pushing into darker and dirtier territories with Body Riddle and its companion EPs, Throttle Furniture and Ted. With Turning Dragon, Clark steps up the pace, pushes up the experimentation levels and gets down and dirty on the dance floor.

Recorded in his apartment in Berlin, where Clark has recently moved, Turning Dragon is a much more immediate and incendiary collection, which builds on the momentum of the recent Throttle Promoter EP, yet those expecting a whole album of blasting Dirty Pixie or Kin Griff may be in for a shock. Built from a now familiar pool of processed acoustic sounds, gritty electronics and environmental noises, Turning Dragon is much sharper, more angular than its predecessors. Clark leaves behind the complex refined textural motifs of Body Riddle and casts his attention onto resolutely techno formations. New Year Storm and Volcan Veins, which open the record, demonstrate this shift particularly well. On the former, Clark splatters a heavy beat with caustic squelches and occasional melodic debris, while he blends processed vocals and harsh metallic noises to give the latter an edge that is maintained pretty much thereafter.

For Wolves Crew, Arch Of The North, Mercy Sines and BEG all share with the aforementioned a taste for loud and abrasive sounds, powerful beats and gut-twisting bass. The metallic tones and loose soundscapes of For Wolves Crew are echoed by the contrasted sonic collage of Mercy Sines, which, caught between the vast reverb of its background section and the sturdy rhythmic pattern that are pressed on top, gives out an uneasy claustrophobic feeling, while the dense layers off the heavy duty BEG eventually dissipate to reveal the quite magnificent spreads of Penultimate Persian, occasionally reminiscent of Autechre, especially in its middle section.

On Truncation Horn, Clark adopts a cut’n'paste technique which evokes label mate Jackson, but the addition of a guitar-driven groove gives the piece a much funkier twist, while Violenl and Radiation Clutch are resolutely darker and more oppressive. Clark seems to accentuate the corrosive aspect of his music by reducing it to more minimal forms. Deprived of their natural breathing space, these two tracks recoil into some of the most inhospitable territories he has visited. The Berlin techno influence is never more obvious than on the latter, where Clark applies vast reverbs to blur the boundaries of the backdrop and pushes the linear beat to the forefront. Only Hot May Slides seems somewhat too straightforward and well behaved to fit in properly here.

Fuelled by a much rawer and more spontaneous energy than its predecessors, Turning Dragon puts on record what Clark has been experimenting with on stage and allows him to expand further his panoply of moods. It is certainly his most immediate record. Turning Dragon at time craves the intricate detailing of Body Riddle but the sheer energy of the music largely compensates and contributes to make this Clark’s most entertaining release." [themilkfactory]

[Link removed at the request of the label.Buy]

Kelpe "Sea Inside Body"

2008-01-30T23:13:00.000+01:00

Artist: Kelpe
Album: Sea Inside Body
Label: D.C. Recordings
Release date: October 2004
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo/Ambient Techno/Experimental
RIYL: Boards Of Canada, Plaid, Lusine

Tracklisting:
01. Ice Cream Knife Handle
02. Sickly Situation
03. Growth
04. Nat's Twirly Mug
05. Age Sculpture
06. Keep Danger
07. Overland But Underwater
08. Grappling Hook
09. Age Concerns
10. Knock, Turn
11. Care Of Presto Mini
12. There's A Sea In Your Body
13. Sylvania
14. Petrified
15. Panpipe Dreams (Goodnight)
Total running time: 60' 51"

[Kelpe - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Sea Inside Body is the debut album from Kelpe and was recorded using little more than a PC, a mini disc recorder and a range of house hold implements. An instant electronic classic, Kelpe's rich textures, sound washes and taut beats are offset by samples of bored women as they soul search and psycho babble about their desires, needs and emptiness. These sound bites run like a thread throughout the album, giving it a sense of inertia but never detracting from the oceanic beauty of the compositions. From the womb-like pulse of 'Ice Cream Knife Handle' and the glitch-ridden lullaby of 'Age Sculpture' to the dark bowel-wrenching beats of 'Grappling Hook' and the filtered rhythms of 'There's A Sea In Your Body', these pieces display a level of soulfulness often evades digitally produced music. An accomplished and imaginative debut from one of the rising stars of the electronic scene." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Kelpe "Ex-Aquarium"

2008-01-30T17:46:00.002+01:00

Artist: Kelpe
Album: Ex-Aquarium
Label: D.C. Recordings
Release date: 25 February 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo/Ambient Techno/Experimental
RIYL: Boards Of Canada, Plaid, Lusine

Tracklisting:
01. Under
02. Whirlwound
03. Shipwreck Glue
04. Pinch And Flare
05. Stop Parching Yourself
06. Yippee Space Ghost (Sid Version)
07. Sunken Centre
08. Skylla
09. Bread Machine Bred
10. Silver Nutkin
11. Half Broken Harp
12. Colours Don't Leak
13. Cut It Upwards
14. Over
Total running time: 58' 56"

[Kelpe - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"It has been a lengthy hiatus since Kelpe's last offerings: 2005's "Sunburnt Eyelids" (DCR63) and 2004's acclaimed "Sea Inside Body" album (DC53) which preceded it (described by The Wire Magazine as "One of the most engrossing listens in recent electronic music").

On hearing "Ex-Aquarium" it becomes clear what he has been doing in this time. Countless live performances all over the world as well as numerous explorations into the sonic potential of table tennis have clearly drawn him towards increased instrumentation with Mckeown himself getting behind the drum kit to beat out the rhythm as his new wave of sonic mutations emerge triumphantly from the whitewater.

"Shipwreck Glue" oozes and gripes like a writhing leviathan amidst a din of cowbells and ping pong staccatos. "Whirlwound" swaggers and swells like a rhythmic ocean overture; "Bread Machine Bred" sounds like a whirring automaton making strange maneuvers in the deep. Previous comparisons to the likes of Fourtet, Dabrye, Boards Of Canada will be left in the wake of this sterling new material." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Lawrence "Lowlights From The Past And Future"

2008-01-29T12:06:00.000+01:00

Artist: Lawrence
Album: Lowlights From The Past And Future
Label: Mule Electronic
Release date: 10 June 2006
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno/House
RIYL: Superpitcher, DJ Koze, Pantha Du Prince

Tracklisting:
01. Lawrence "Friday's Child"
02. Lawrence "Spark"
03. Superpitcher "Happiness [Lawrence Remix]"
04. Lawrence "If You Can't Understand"
05. Lawrence "Further"
06. Antonelli "The Morning [Lawrence Remix]"
07. Turner "My Aeroplane Mania [Lawrence Remix]"
08. Lawrence "Swap"
09. Lawrence "Lowlights From The Past"
10. Egoexpress "Aranda [Lawrence Remix]"
11. Lawrence "Untitled"
Total running time: 76' 31"

[Lawrence - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Lawrence is an artist best enjoyed patiently over the duration of an album. The more house-bound project of Hamburg's Peter Kersten (whose other activities include friskier dance-floor fare as Sten, abstract hip-hop as Lloyd and slow-core guitar ambiance as Bordeaux), Lawrence productions are characterised by lazy tempos, spacious rhythms, bright bell-like tones and a keen sense of (minor-keyed) melody, fitting neatly into the catalogues of Kompakt and Dial. On albums ‘The Absence of Blight’ and ‘The Night Will Last Forever’ Kersten wore his indie-miserablism on his sleeve, with successive tracks falling like raindrops on a misty windshield: subtle variants on the same, monochromatic model. There's little variation in either pace, mood or basic components used, but wallowing in these grey shadings is joyously indulgent.

His latest release, ‘Lowlights From the Past and Future’, is collection of singles, b-sides and remixes, and what it suffers from in less cohesive programming, it compensates with in quality. His mix of Antonelli's 'The Morning' is worth admission alone: dark grey pads lifted straight from the Twin Peaks theme growl down low while rattled handfuls of chipped china provide the top-end. There's also a pogoing up-down bassline, sparse, functional drums and a melody of fractured rave keys, all seductively moody and gloriously assembled. Egoexpress' 'Aranda' receives similar treatment, moving from gloomy atmosphere into pseudo-acid bounce, where each element is made to seem entirely necessary. His mix of Superpitcher's microgoth anthem ‘Happiness’ makes the concept more elusive than ever, losing the urgency in favour of a nihilistic hopelessness, conjured from dying tape loops, off-kilter chimes and weeping dub tones.

With tracks like 'Swap' and 'Spark' Kompakt have returned the favour, their mournful funk fittingly showing up on mixes by Superpitcher, Michael Mayer and Tobias Thomas, but even they'd be reluctant to feature the adolescent whine of Turner's 'My Aeroplane Mania', left far too intact to excite. 'Lowlights From the Past' is itself hardly a highlight, feeling spare to the point of blandness, while 'If You Can't Understand' left me confused, but these reservations are few and petty, and this collection - like the whole Lawrence back-catalogue - can be highly recommended." [source]

[Download(part1.part2).Buy]

Dan Deacon "Spiderman Of The Rings"

2008-01-25T01:15:00.000+01:00

Artist: Dan Deacon
Album: Spiderman Of The Ring
Label: Carpark Records
Release date: 7 May 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Electro/Experimental
RIYL: Schneider TM, Battles, Animal Collective

Tracklisting:
01. Woody Woodpecker
02. The Crystal Cat
03. Wham City
04. Big Milk
05. Okie Dokie
06. Trippy Green Skull
07. Snake Mistakes
08. Pink Batman
09. Jimmy Joe Roche
Total running time: 46' 19"

[Dan Deacon - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat - Video Clip]

"I first saw Dan Deacon play live in August 2005, just after I moved to Baltimore. The occasion was a "bridging-the-gap" measure at a local loft space to foster unity between the city's art-damaged noise kids and its breakbeat-loving club kids. By the time I arrived, a balding, baby-fattened fellow with a patchy Brillo frizz of beard was unraveling a mess of electronics on a table in the middle of the dancefloor. And once all the plugs were plugged and the jacks were jacked, this man, Dan Deacon, turned himself on.

What came out of the PA was a barrage of cheap-sounding, rainbow-hued, breakcore-tempo electronic noise. It felt like I was hearing my entire childhood record collection of cheerful kiddie 45s sped up on a hotrodded Fisher Price record player. Deacon himself was dancing along with a joyous palsy, singing through a scrim of squeaky effects. In a night where I'd shown up wanting dance music, Deacon had completely upended my expectations. He also made me a fan for life. A small handful of the grouches stood with incredulous arms folded across their chests and everyone else proceeded to freak the fuck out, almost as wildly as Deacon himself. Welcome to Baltimore.

"Wooody Wooodpecker", the opening track from Deacon's Carpark Records debut Spiderman of the Rings, combines everything awesome-- and potentially alienating-- about Deacon's music into 3:50 and sticks it right at the beginning of the record. Here, he loops and distorts the famous cartoon character's convulsive laugh over a sizzling synthesizer crescendo, a needling 12-note keyboard melody, and mechanical percussion that winds to a point where a human drummer's tendons would snap. It's like Deacon's switch got stuck somewhere between "irritate" and "captivate" and he decided to never bother fixing it.

Despite its cacophonous electronic surface, the best of Spiderman of the Rings hits the pleasure centers with a string of great pop singles. "The Crystal Cat" could almost be a straight-up surf-rock tune until the moment when Deacon's leader-of-the-pack goon croon becomes a grotesquely twisted helium shriek and the drums explode like illegal fireworks. "Okie Dokie" is basically "Wooly Bully" rewritten with Deacon's handmade tone generators and ring modulators.

See, Deacon makes "noise rock" that taps directly into the great lineage of batshit bubblegum pop. Spideman connects at various points with Kasenetz and Katz, Sam the Sham, happy hardcore and gabba techno, "Surfin' Bird", the twinkly melodies of an infant's mobile (the unexpectedly gorgeous "Big Milk"), the Ramones, Koji Kondo (composer-in-residence for the Nintendo Entertainment System), Max Martin, and Daft Punk. On an earlier EP, 2006's Acorn Master, Deacon covered Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash". That spastic take on a rock'n'roll classic feels with hindsight like an obvious run up to Spiderman.

But there's at least one song on Spiderman that betrays his deep background in more cerebral electronic and avant-garde music. Deacon is a core member of Baltimore's Wham City crew-- a Baltimore loft/show space and arts collective-- and the 12-minute "Wham City" is this album's centerpiece. In this tribute to his friends and his former home, you can hear hints of all sorts of hypnotic beats, from Neu!'s motorik percussion and Kraftwerk's synthesizers to Steve Reich's mallets and Terry Riley's keyboards. But as a sing-along-- or chant-along in this case, one of the catchiest of the year-- it also hints at a deep love of old "Sesame Street" records and a full collection of "Muppet Show" DVDs. Even when Deacon goes epic-- and pays tribute to the hardcore experimental composers he studied in college-- he can't resist the urge to play up to your inner child.

Like all the kid-friendly stuff that informs his sound-- pop bands, candy ravers, Carl Stalling, noise bands in stupid masks, rap music reduced to a bunch of catchy catch-phrases, and jumping on your bed with friends-- Deacon doesn't care about looking cool. (Rock magazine stylists will never get within 100 feet of the guy.) And if you're down with the cause (Wham City fliers flatly stated "no jerks"), Deacon wants you to join him in adding silly joy to a world that's been feeling pretty drab. This fearlessness in the name of trying to make people happy spills onto Spiderman of the Rings like neon poster paint. The album deserves to make song-and-dance man Deacon a superstar, or at least as much of a superstar as the Dean Martin of self-soldered electronics can be." [source]

[Download(MegaUpload.RapidShare).Buy]

Hot Chip "Made In The Dark"

2008-01-21T14:36:00.001+01:00

Artist: Hot Chip
Album: Made In The Dark
Label: DFA
Release date: 4 February 2008
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dance Punk, Electro Pop
RIYL: LCD Soundsystem, Junior Boys, Simian Mobile Disco

Tracklisting:
01. Out At The Pictures
02. Shake A Fist
03. Ready For The Floor
04. Bendable Poseable
05. We're Looking For A Lot Of Love
06. Touch Too Much
07. Made In The Dark
08. One Pure Thought
09. Hold On
10. Wrestlers
11. Don't Dance
12. Whistle For Will
13. In The Privacy Of Our Love
Total running time: 53' 57"

[Hot Chip - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor - Video Clip]

"The music making partnership of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin came into existence in gradual stages, and has culminated in their third album Made In The Dark the follow up to the UK gold selling, Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Warning. Made in the Dark will be out February 5th.

The nuclei of the band is Taylor and Goddard, school friends who found common ground and began to make home recordings using an odd assortment of cheap synthesizers, guitars and percussion. Clarke, another school friend, joined the duo soon after, impressing them with his quick-witted playing and rather devious musical experiments. The end product of this era was the first full Hot Chip album Coming on Strong.

The Warning represented a great step forward in terms of songwriting and production, though the album was still recorded exclusively at home and without recourse to a professional studio (though they were grateful to DFA for the offer).Al Doyle and Felix Martin, already members of the band as well at work on their own musical projects, now joined the band full time as Hot Chip took off as a live entity, performing in the United States, the UK and Europe. The sound of the band evolved towards wilder, heavier electronics, though still coupled with a signature pop aesthetic." [source]

[Download.Buy]

The Mountain Goats "Heretic Pride"

2008-01-19T14:56:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Album: Heretic Pride
Label: 4AD
Release date: 18 February 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock/Indie Rock
RIYL: Okkervil River, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Decemberists

Tracklisting:
01. Sax Rohmer #1
02. San Bernardino
03. Heretic Pride
04. Autoclave
05. New Zion
06. So Desperate
07. In The Craters On The Moon
08. Lovecraft In Brooklyn
09. Tianchi Lake
10. How To Embrace A Swamp Creature
11. Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident
12. Sept 15th 1983
13. Michael Myers Resplendent
Total running time: 44' 57"

[The Mountain Goats - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New - Live on AOL]

[The Mountain Goats - Maybe Sprout Wings - Live on AOL]

"The Mountain Goats are a prolific outfit whose beginnings in the early '90s were documented on numerous lo-fi cassettes, 7'' singles and compilations, making an accurate count subject to some debate. Whatever the number, at the centre of The Mountain Goats stands John Darnielle, singer and composer of myriad impassioned, poetically allusive songs.

''Sax Rohmer #1'' is a ragged anthem, the music slipping and sliding like trying to walk along an icy pavement. ''San Bernardino'''s pathos-ridden recollection is borne on mournful strings and gentle voice. ''Lovecraft in Brooklyn'' is urgent and spare, Darnielle's narrative from the edge battling it out with gritty rhythm guitar to impressive effect. ''Tianchi Lake'' switches pace, changing down a gear as though teleporting from urban squalor to something that might just be wistful contemplation.

Darnielle's reedy, nasal voice conveys feeling with a surprising subtlety. At times it's impassioned and edgy, cut with just the hint of a snarl, at others it's jaunty or wry. The music's often spindly core of voice and jangly guitar is given colour by organ, strings, drums and the like. There's a sense throughout Heretic Pride of an unvarnished, lived realness that's raised up and given wings by Darnielle's poetic sincerity. If you're a fan of the quiet backwoods desperation of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy or the literate strangeness of Sufjan Stevens then this album might be for you." [source]

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Destroyer "Trouble In Dreams"

2008-01-18T15:35:00.002+01:00

Artist: Destroyer
Album: Troube In Dreams
Label: Merge
Release date: 18 March 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock
RIYL: The New Pornographers, Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade

Tracklisting:
01. Blue Flower/Blue Flame
02. Dark Leaves From A Thread
03. The State
04. Foam Hands
05. My Favorite Year
06. Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night's Ape)
07. Introducing Angles
08. Rivers
09. Leopard Of Honor
10. Plaza Trinidad
11. Libby's First Sunrise
Total running time: 52' 55"

[Destroyer - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Destroyer - Foam Hands - Live @ Sled Island Festival, 2007]

Bio

"Dan Bejar started Destroyer as a solo home-recording experiment in the early to mid nineties. Working alone, and at his own pace, Bejar dabbled in four tracking and worked to develop his style and vision.

He was meticulous in reworking songs again and again until he found confidence in his music and his voice. By 1996 he had culled enough material to release his debut full length, We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge. Stripped down lo-fi electric folk, Golden Bridge introduced Dan as a major new talent in Vancouver. In 1998 Bejar added a rhythm section to Destroyer and headed into a real studio for the first time to record City Of Daughters, a sparsely produced but engagingly vibrant batch of songs in which Bejar’s unique and inventive lyrics began to evolve into an obtuse and poetically original voice. Destroyer expanded once again in early 2000, this time rounding out into a quintet for Thief, the third album, which provided an expanded canvas for Bejar’s cryptic and scathing indictments that warned of the pitfalls and pratfalls of the modern music industry (or at least that’s what everyone claimed he was singing about; Dan offered no explanations). By the time Streethawk: A Seduction hit the streets in 2001, the groundwork had been laid and a maelstrom of critical acclaim flowed all around. Streethawk was a highly refined and biting condemnation, a harsh satire of popular culture, an idea and conception honed to razor sharp perfection.

So where does Destroyer go from here … how does one top a masterpiece? Well, Bejar packed up and left Vancouver, heading off for a year in Montreal and later Madrid, effectively disbanding the group and starting over from scratch. When he returned from the wilderness, so-to-speak, it was with sprawling bombast and an obvious disdain for restraint or expectations. This Night, Destroyer album number five and Bejar’s debut on Merge Records, was released in the fall of 2002 and continued to raise the bar, confounding perceptions of what exactly Destroyer was, or could be. Epic and sprawling, it was the perfect foil to Streethawk’s sleek and refined approach. An unapologetic send up of rock & roll excess and conceit, This Night confused and amused in equal portions. But it was not long before Bejar was busy cooking up plans to turn the tables once again. Your Blues turned everything on its head with a vainglorious retreat from the American rock tradition. Released in the fall of 2004, Your Blues was a MIDI-synthesizer symphony celebrating an exercise in old-world excess, exploring what Bejar dubbed “European Blues.” When Dan decided to take Your Blues on the road for the most extensive touring of Destroyer’s career, he tore it all down again. Not even attempting to recreate the synth-heavy extravagance of the recordings, Bejar instead recruited Victoria spazz-rockers Frog Eyes as his backing band, rebuilding the songs from scratch for the live performance. The results were chronicled on the Notorious Lightning And Other Works EP, released in the spring of 2005.

Over the more than 10 years that Dan Bejar has been performing and recording as Destroyer, there have been numerous lineup changes and shifts within “the band”. This ever-evolving shuffle of musicians has led some to consider Destroyer as a solo project, but Dan has always insisted that he sees Destroyer as a band, with full contributions from his collaborators. Admittedly he’s just never been very good at the logistics of keeping a band together. All that is about to change as Bejar assures us that the current line-up of Destroyer that emerged from the recording sessions for Destroyer’s Rubies shall the definitive and permanent line up for the band from this point forward. Many members here have performed with Bejar in one form or another before, some on previous Destroyer albums. From the sound of things on this record, it will be a band to be reckoned with. We would also be remiss not to point out that the glue that holds all of this together are Dan’s longtime collaborators, the production team of JC/DC (John Collins and Dave Carswell).

For those keeping score at home, Destroyer is and shall be:
Dan Bejar (vocals, guitar), Nicholas Bragg (guitar), Tim Loewen (bass, guitar, harmonica), Ted Bois (keyboards), Scott Morgan (drums, baritone sax) and Fisher Rose (vibes, trumpet)" [source]

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Sons & Daughters "The Gift"

2008-01-16T13:48:00.001+01:00

Artist: Sons & Daughters
Album: The Gift
Label: Domino
Release date: 28 January 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock
RIYL: The Long Blondes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand

Tracklisting:
01. Gilt Complex
02. Split Lips
03. The Nest
04. Rebel With The Ghost
05. Chains
06. This Gift
07. Darling
08. Flags
09. Iodine
10. The Bell
11. House In My Head
12. Goodbye Service
Total running time: 40' 33"

[Sons & Daughters - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Sons & Daughters - Gilt Complex - Video Clip]

"In the summer of 2006, Sons And Daughters holed up in a house in the village of Adfern on the west coast of Scotland. They had no television, no telephones, and worked on new songs in a converted barn for eight hours every day. "We wrote and practiced all day and played poker and got drunk at night. We were committed to writing a great pop record," says Adele Bethel. "We all love Blondie and The Smiths and we wanted to embrace that and not repeat what we had done before. Then we thought: who would be the perfect producer for a record like this?"

Domino's Laurence Bell suggested Bernard Butler, and all being huge Suede fans the band agreed. This Gift bears out that Butler and Sons And Daughters make a winning combination, although it didn't always feel like that at the time of recording. "He's very, very tough," says Scott Paterson. "He doesn't sugar-coat anything and we had a lot of clashes. Then we heard the playbacks of the songs and it all began to make sense." Adds Adele: "At first it was his way or no way. Then Scott got talking to him about Joe Meek and Bert Jansch and we started to click."

The result, despite or perhaps because of the tensions and struggles that came during its recording, is an album on which a unique, inspired band step up onto a whole new level.

For the last five years Sons And Daughters have worked towards fashioning a distinctive sound, image and story. Inspired by the melancholy storytelling of Lee Hazlewood, the lyricism of Bill Callaghan and Leonard Cohen and the raw power of country, blues and folk, the Glasgow-based four-piece have been busy creating their own world and making it an interesting place to live in since 2002. The punk blues of their 2004 debut Love The Cup and 2005's The Repulsion Box won fans such as Nick Cave and Franz Ferdinand and marked Sons And Daughters out as a band of fine taste and judgment. None of this meant anything to Bernard Butler, though.

"I hadn't heard them before," admits Butler. "They played me their new songs and I thought that they had a lot of drama and passion, but that they needed channeling. And in a way I felt that the band's strong image could hold them back, like they might be trying to fit into a genre they had created. Sons And Daughters are a cool bunch of people, but I didn't really want them to be cool; I wanted them to face up to their demons and embrace all the things they loved Then once we got talking we realized we liked the same things, that we all liked Fleetwood Mac as much as The Smiths."

Amongst other things the band love are girl groups, the Heath Robinson-like pioneering genius of the British producer Joe Meek, the tarnished glamour of 60s provincial Britain, and soaring melodies. It was this side of Sons And Daughters that Butler was interested in. "I only had to bring out what was there already," he says. "The new songs they had written were filled with strong melodies and wonderful lyrics, and I wanted to make the most out of Adele's lovely voice. Every band has a comfort zone, which in Sons And Daughters' case was the sound they had fashioned so far. It is the producer's job to take them out of that and find what they're capable of. "

The songs on This Gift offer glimpses of a romanticized Britain; a result of the band spending so much time out of the country, on the road, and going to US states like Montana where Adele visited a rest stop bathroom to see a notice board listing 100 women in the area that had gone missing. "Things like that play on your mental state and fire your thoughts," she says. Scott couched the stories and sentiments in Adele's lyrics with suitably elegant guitar parts. "I was looking for ways to expand the sound, to use as many different guitar styles as possible," says Scott. "Then Bernard brought in the Gibson 335 12-string that Johnny Marr played on Strangeways, Here We Come and that was like Excalibur. The power of the Gods was with us."

Through a combination of committed songwriting, a classic pop sensibility and a little bit of tough love from Bernard Butler, Sons And Daughters have made a brilliant record. It was hard, but it was worth it." [source]

[Kudos to Kokoro Data MP3 for the link.]

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Xiu Xiu "Women As Lovers"

2008-01-14T13:36:00.001+01:00

Artist: Xiu Xiu
Album: Women As Lovers
Label: Kill Rock Stars
Release date: 28 January 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental Rock/Indie Rock
RIYL: Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Frog Eyes

Tracklisting:
01. I Do What I Want When I Want
02. In Lust You Can Hear The Axe Fall
03. F.T.W.
04. No Friend Oh!
05. Guantanamo Canto
06. Under Pressure [Feat. Michael Gira]
07. Black Keyboard
08. Master Of The Bump (Kurt Stumbaugh, I Can Feel The Soil Falling Over My Head)
09. You Are Pregnant, You You Are Dead
10. The Leash
11. Child At Arms
12. Puff And Bunny
13. White Nerd
14. Gayle Lynn
Total running time: 43' 39"

[Xiu Xiu - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Xiu Xiu - I Do What I Want When I Want - Video Clip]

"Women as Lovers is the sixth studio album by American indie band Xiu Xiu. It shares its title with the Martin Chalmers translation of Elfriede Jelinek's 1975 novel Die Liebhaberinnen.

The album is reported to be "more approachable or communicative on a basic human level" than anything else the band has released." [source]

[Kudos to Kokoro Data MP3 for this link.]

[Download.Buy]

The Magnetic Fields "Distortion"

2008-01-13T22:05:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Magnetic Fields
Album: Distortion
Label: Nonesuch
Release date: 14 January 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock
RIYL: Neutral Milk Hotel, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Yo La Tengo

Tracklisting:
01. Three-Way
02. California Girls
03. Old Fools
04. Xavier Says
05. Mr. Mistletoe
06. Please Stop Dancing
07. Drive On, Driver
08. Too Drunk To Dream
09. Till The Bitter End
10. I'll Dream Alone
11. The Nun's Litany
12. Zombie Boy
13. Courtesans
Total running time: 38' 46"

[The Magnetic Fields - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Magnetic Fields - Born On A Train - Video Clip]

"It's four years since the last The Magnetic Fields album, i, but Stephin Merritt has hardly been idle. Yet where 69 Love Songs showed a remarkable profligacy of songwriting, and Showtunes elicited his love of Chinese music, Distortion is a conscious step back - not just looking over its shoulder, but swiveling round for a full-on examination of the past.

And the past, in this case, is dominated by one band - The Jesus And Mary Chain. If you loved the band's 1980s blooming, then this record will be of huge interest as Merritt consciously pays homage to the era. Whether it can be regarded as a step forward for the The Magnetic Fields, however, is another issue entirely.

As ever Merritt provides consummate lyrical vignettes, most strikingly on Too Drunk To Dream, where he observes in the unaccompanied introduction that "sober life is a prison, shitfaced it is a blessing, sober nobody wants you, shitfaced they're all undressing". The song then steps out with a swaggering confidence, though look closer and it's not difficult to spot its more vulnerable underbelly.

Distortion proves an appropriate name for the album, quite apart from its obvious representation in white noise, fully realised in Drive On, Driver, with its blatant guitar solo splitting the easy-spirited vocal in two before the orchestral touches shine through, seemingly from the other end of the room.

Merritt allows the full range of his voice to come through, not always successfully. You won't hear a song more world weary than the diseased Old Fools, sounding like it had to be completed with the aid of a set of walking sticks. Likewise Mr. Mistletoe explores the lower end of the baritone, and its macabre slow waltz and swirling distortion complement each other well.

And yet a dreamy psychedelica lends a more than pleasant air to Xavier Says, while Please Stop Dancing adds more than a touch of Human League deadpan. Zombie Boy, however, falls flat, its robopop lumbering at a leaden pace in an over-reverberant sound world.

Stephin Merritt's aim with this album isn't always clear. On many occasions it feels like an album he's just discovered in the attic, gathering dust over the last twenty years. And yet while it can be viewed as a step backwards the qualities of his music still come toward the fore, both lyrically and melodically. Most of the songs have plenty to give in these spheres, so for fans this can be viewed as a qualified success, if never quite approaching previous highs." [source]

[Download.Buy]

The Jesus And Mary Chain "Psychocandy"

2008-01-12T17:07:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Jesus And Mary Chain
Album: Psychocandy
Label: Blanco Y Negro
Release date: February 1985
Genre: Rock
Style: Shoegazing, Indie Rock
RIYL: My Bloody Valentine, Ride

Tracklisting:
01. Just Like Honey
02. The Living End
03. Taste The Floor
04. The Hardest Walk
05. Cut Dead
06. In A Hole
07. Taste Of Cindy
08. Some Candy Talking
09. Never Understand
10. Inside Me
11. Sowing Seeds
12. My Little Underground
13. You Trip Me Up
14. Something's Wrong
15. It's So Hard
Total running time: 42' 41"

[The Jesus And Mary Chain - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Jesus And Mary Chain - Never Understand - Video Clip]

[The Jesus And Mary Chain - Interview (1986) - French subtitles]

"The Jesus and Mary Chain is a riddle, a conundrum, a source of confusion and anxiety, a love-'em-or-hate-'em proposition. Obviously schooled in the aesthetics of noise and punk and simpleminded pop, the Jesus and Mary Chain is a perfect recombinant of every Edge City outlaw ethic ever espoused in rock.

With the willful and deliberate abandon of postpunk ghouls, they rape and pillage everything you've ever loved: the Phil Spector "Be My Baby" drum tat-too, the sweet abrasion of the Velvet Underground, the velocity and mangled pop of the Ramones, the black-leather sloganeering of Suicide, the lovable incompetence of Sixties garage bands, the shrill, screaming, grinding industrial pandemonium of SPK and Throbbing Gristle. The big question arises: Is the Jesus and Mary Chain the real thing, or is it a shrewd package job for critics and would-be iconoclasts?

The album title Psychocandy sums it up with alarming accuracy. This is the opposite of sugarcoating the pill; it's like wrapping sandpaper around a Tootsie Pop. The veneer is gritty and inedible, the next layer is hard and crunchy, the core is soft and chewy. These are kids after all, which just might be their saving grace. If indeed they are a superficial and diluted version of the most hard-core and dangerous elements in the rock lexicon, maybe they are too young to care.

For all its chain-saw screech and übermetallic badness, the Jesus and Mary Chain is a pop band with doo-doo-doos and la-la-las, simple melodies and full echoing production around Jim Reid's laconic Lou Reed-like monotone. William Reid's guitar parts blast shards of maniacal feedback across the underpinnings of Douglas Hart's bass lines. And in true Mo Tucker stand-up fashion, Bobby Gillespie keeps the beat uncomplicated and direct.

It's obvious to the point of inanity that the Velvet Underground is the pure and adult model for the self-consciously evil xerography of the Jesus and Mary Chain. Perhaps these are the days of whining neuroses and the function of the Jesus and Mary Chain is to make ruthless, gut-bending noise safe for the airwaves. But, then again, if they can actually get their holocaustic guitar squall on the radio, maybe they're doing us all some kind of public service." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Love "Forever Changes"

2008-01-09T18:45:00.000+01:00

Artist: Love
Album: Forever Changes
Label: Elektra
Release date: 1967
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Folk Rock
RIYL: Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, The Kinks

Tracklisting:
01. Alone Again Or
02. A House Is Not A Motel
03. Andmoreagain
04. The Daily Planet
05. Old Man
06. The Red Telephone
07. Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale
08. Live And Let Live
09. The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This
10. Bummer In The Summer
11. You Set The Scene
Total running time: 39' 22"

[Love - Alone Again Or + A House Is Not A Motel - Live @ Royal Festival Hall, London]

Bio

"Of the many lost classics produced during the creative explosion of the late '60s psychedelic heyday, the greatest may be the third album by the Los Angeles-based group Love.

In its startling originality, its elaborate use of symphonic orchestrations and its nods to the vast canon of music that preceded it, "Forever Changes" is everything that's been claimed of 1967's most heralded rock release, the Beatles' overrated "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." But while it has its optimistic moments, its overall vibe is far bleaker and much less hopeful than the hippie ideal of "All You Need Is Love."

Arthur Lee, Love's key songwriter, primary singer and driving force, was an African-American who never subscribed to the flower children's sunny visions. Ravaged by the tensions of the Cold War, the slaughter in Vietnam and the riots in the streets of America's biggest cities, the world that he chronicled was no utopia, but a dark and sinister place where the occasional ray of light nonetheless managed to penetrate the gloom.

From the beginning, Love thrived on the combination of two mismatched songwriters. Born in Memphis, Lee was raised in L.A.'s tough Crenshaw ghetto. Strongly influenced by Mick Jagger, he presented what pioneering rock critic Lillian Roxon called "an amusing paradox," an African-American singing like a white Englishman singing like an old African-American.

In contrast, Lee's partner Bryan MacLean was the son of a Hollywood architect who grew up swimming in his neighbor Elizabeth Taylor's pool. His first girlfriend was Liza Minnelli, and he was raised on classical music and Broadway standards. "You hear more of my influence on Arthur than his influence on me," he told the journalist Alan Vorda in the book Psychedelic Psounds. "What you have [in Love] is a black guy from L.A. writing show tunes."

Love also displayed a heaping dose of the Beatles circa "Rubber Soul," folk-rock via L.A. compatriots the Byrds (Lee originally linked up with MacLean because MacLean was a Byrds roadie and Lee thought he was likely to draw their crowd), and the lush, orchestrated soundscapes of Hollywood film scores. (The band's use of symphonic flourishes is the most influential element of its sound, with "Forever Changes" standing second only to the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" as the biggest inspiration for the so-called ork-pop or orchestral-pop movement.)

In 1966, Love bowed with a memorable self-titled album that opens with a snarling, speed-freak version of "My Little Red Book," a Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune from the soundtrack to "What's New, Pussycat?"

It became a minor hit and established the band as too-cool hipsters; the album cover featured the quintet scowling like angry young poets and fashion models posing before a broken-down chimney in a fire-gutted mansion that was said to have belonged to Hollywood's Dracula, Bela Lugosi.

The cover of "Da Capo," the group's second album, found an expanded sextet back at the same site. The sounds were becoming much more expansive as well, introducing an element of the baroque that would flourish fully on the band's third and best effort--a departure indicated by a radically different cover: A colorful drawing of the musicians' huddled heads, it recalls the similar images on the Beatles' "Revolver."

By 1968, Love was starting to fall apart as some of the band members turned from the casual use of psychedelics to harder substances such as heroin. Lee was also becoming increasingly bitter that the group had failed to hit the heights achieved by labelmate Jim Morrison, and he blamed prejudice. "I wasn't gonna go eat garbage like the Doors did," he told the Bob fanzine in 1994. "And then, too, I wasn't white. The cold fact of the matter is birds of a feather flock together."

Though he was only 22 at the time, the band's leader had become increasingly fatalistic, convinced that he was going to die and that Love's next album would be his final testament. (The back cover shows the singer standing with a cracked vase full of dead flowers.) Knowing that he couldn't compete with the searing electronic sounds of his friend, Jimi Hendrix, who had begun his ascent to superstardom, Lee decided to pare down for a quieter, more introspective sound.

The group recorded acoustically, sitting in a circle as if jamming in the living room. The tracks were augmented later with tasteful orchestrations evoking the varied sounds of life in L.A., from spicy mariachi horns to lulling strings to dissonant guitars that bring to mind the strangling and ever-present traffic.

"The funny thing about [recording] that album--there's a full orchestra [when] I walk in," Lee says in the liner notes to Rhino's 1997 reissue. "With the way I looked [and] the way I dressed, I was sitting there for about an hour before they figured out who I was! It was quite amusing, 'cause I wasn't going to tell them anything."

As singers and songwriters, Lee and MacLean could more than hold their own in the company of musicians from the L.A. Philharmonic, and session greats such as Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye, who started out playing on some of the tracks before Love bassist Ken Forssi and drummer Michael Stuart pulled themselves together to finish the disc.

MacLean contributes only two songs, "Old Man" and "Alone Again Or," but they are integral to the album. The latter, which opens the record, is a tribute to his mother's flamenco dancing, punctuated by a trumpet solo that brings to mind the Tijuana Brass (producer Bruce Botnick was also working with Herb Alpert at the time). At first blush, the driving and catchy number seems to be a love song, but the narrator scoffs at the hippie notion that he "could be in love with almost everyone." In the end he remains "alone again tonight, my dear."

Lee is even more cynical. He lampoons the psychedelic culture by chronicling its ugly realities ("Live and Let Live" opens with the line, "Oh, the snot has caked against my pants," which Lee wrote about waking up after a night zonked out on drugs). "The Red Telephone" takes its title from the nuclear hotline allegedly set up between Moscow and Washington, D.C.; the propulsive "A House Is Not a Motel" contemplates an unspecified holocaust ("And the water's turned to blood/And if you don't think so, go turn on your tub"), while another track is unambiguously titled "Bummer in the Summer."

"While the music of 'Forever Changes' flows with an almost narcotic consistency and deceptive prettiness, the words can be like an itch that you can never quite put your finger on," critic Ben Edmonds wrote. "The combination is thoroughly captivating and slightly unsettling--psychedelic in the truest sense."

Witness "The Red Telephone," the album's centerpiece and most striking studio creation. The tune builds from a quiet ballad to an otherworldly and somewhat paranoid nursery rhyme about an Orwellian world where unnamed forces stamp out any trace of individualism. "They're locking him up today/They're throwing away the key/I wonder who it will be tomorrow/You or me?" Lee chants as the song builds to its climax.

"We're all normal and we want our freedom," another voice responds, but it's never quite clear who prevails.

MacLean quit Love after "Forever Changes," which was a commercial disappointment upon its release (though in the decades that followed, it would eventually reach gold-record status). Lee made several more albums with a new version of the band, including "False Start" (1970), noteworthy primarily for a guest appearance by Hendrix. He dropped out of the music scene for much of the '70s and '80s, while MacLean went on to write songs for the likes of Debby Boone, Patty Loveless and his sister, Maria McKee, until he died of an apparent heart attack in 1998.

Lee's failure to produce much worthwhile music after 1968 has prompted some critics to put him in a class with cracked psychedelic geniuses Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and Roky Erickson. In the mid-'90s, he was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, thanks to California's "three strikes you're out" legislation, which qualified a string of relatively minor incidents as felonies.

Freed in 2002 after six years behind bars, he returned to the music world with the backing of a younger group of psychedelic-popsters called Baby Lemonade. (With the help of a 15-piece orchestra, Lee and the band will perform "Forever Changes" in its entirety Tuesday at the Park West.)

While Lee is talking about recording new material, it's likely that Love's third album will remain his crowning achievement--the enduring testament that he envisioned 35 years ago.

"'Forever Changes' were my last words of Love," he told Creem magazine in 1981. "My last words to the world, only I've been here ever since. Just like a guy saying goodbye, and you look out your front door, and he's still there 15 years later."" [source]

[Download.Buy]

Figurines "Skeleton"

2008-01-08T20:26:00.000+01:00

Artist: Figurines
Album: Skeleton
Label: Morningside Records
Release date: 2005
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock
RIYL: Modest Mouse, Built To Spill, Pavement

Tracklisting:
01. Race You
02. The Wonder
03. All Night
04. Silver Ponds
05. Ambush
06. Rivalry
07. I Remember
08. Other Plans
09. Ghost Towns
10. Continuous Songs
11. Fiery Affair
12. Wrong Way All The Way
13. Back In The Day
14. Release Me On The Floor
Total running time: 45' 09"

[Figurines - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Figurines - The Wonder - Video Clip]

[Figurines - I Remember - Video Clip]

"Catchiness is a card seasoned listeners dislike playing or having played on them. To call a record "catchy" reveals almost nothing. Without it there would be very little left of Guided by Voices, Nirvana, or Buzzcocks, but nor would there be any Ace of Base, Steve Miller Band, or Huey Lewis & The News. Yet, despite endless failures on the behalf of both critics and fans to quantify this ineffable force, "catchy" is unquestionably the word with which to begin on Skeleton, the sophomore album from Denmark's Figurines.

Glossing over this young quartet's infectiousness would mean lumping them indiscriminately into the ever-growing phalanx of Modest Mouse/Built to Spill acolytes. Sure, frontman Christian Hjelm uncannily mixes Isaac Brock's nervous vocal tics with Doug Martsch's nasal croon, and yes, they deploy the same octave riffs and slapdash lo-fi production work that served as a staple for any number of indie legends. But Figurines carve their own niche thanks to an arsenal of refreshing, energetic hooks over a straightforward, non-disruptive palette. While debut Shake a Mountain stumbled over gawky guitars and Hjelm's overly twangy vocals, Skeleton delivers gigantic pop hooks in stride, with charm to boot.

Misleading opening ballad "Race You" encapsulates the band's newfound boldness by copping more from Antony and the Johnsons than from any 90s behemoths. Here, in spurts of tortured falsetto, Hjelm nods to Neil Young circa After the Gold Rush-- though he and his band quickly prove capable of a broader range than stark emoting and classic rock pilgrimages. By the following track, the almost unthinkably hooky "The Wonder", Hjelm is shouting one embraceable indie maxim after another, resulting in one of the sharpest indie rock songs of the young year so far. And this, Skeleton's de facto opener, is where things really begin to heat up: Furious strummed riffs send the song charging ahead anthemically, its guitars emitting fret buzz and pick scrapes like sparks off Claus Salling Johansen's sixteenth-note assault.

From there, the record cruises through a series of familiar indie rock signifiers and off-kilter rhythms, but as with that inescapable signifier "catchy," elements that on paper read as tame or familiar instead congeal into something strikingly refreshing and engaging. Part of Skeleton's appeal lies in the songwriting's lead-to-gold alchemy; most tracks begin fairly nondescript before unsuspectingly blossoming into glorious pop gems. "I Remember" kicks off with a geeky Kinks riff and Hjelm's self-consciously cool drawl before launching into a howling exclamation-- Johansen's guitar soaring alongside Hjelm's ascending hook. Likewise, "Ambush" nods to one of Hjelm's few admitted influences with its CCR-fried blues verse, but again, hooks trump hulk as the classic rock-sculpted verse melts into a quirky sensitive guy chorus on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Unfortunately, Hjelm's hooks only burn so bright for so long, and while several of the album's more adventurous tracks earn points for diversity, some never quite register. "Back in the Day" highlights the acoustic guitar nicely, though all the Led Zeppelin III maskings can't hide Hjelm's uninspired delivery, and "Ghost Towns" slacks off as a midtempo ballad. Despite these tribulations, "Release Me on the Floor" borrows from the tradition of Built to Spill's great closers, an introspective yet jam-worthy number on urban loneliness.

Figurines take a risk with an album built mostly on hum-worthiness, but these hookniks show why Denmark is wise to dedicate a portion of their GDP on promoting the band overseas. Former single "Silver Pond" updates the typically retrofit dead end of jangly power-pop with contemporary signifiers. It's a feat the band manages to pull off again and again, track after track, over the course of Skeleton, and the true heart of the record: making the familiar seem fresh and giddy pop seem like indie manna. Though Figurines won't necessarily be the coolest band you'll hear this year, they may yet become your favorite." [source]

[Download.Buy]

British Sea Power "Do You Like Rock Music?"

2008-01-06T21:00:00.000+01:00

Artist: British Sea Power
Album: Do You Like Rock Music?
Label: Rough Trade
Release date: 14 January 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Indie Rock
RIYL: Doves, Arcade Fire

Tracklisting:
01. All In It
02. Lights Out For Darker Skies
03. No Lucifer
04. Waving Flags
05. Canvey Island
06. Down On The Ground
07. A Trip Out
08. The Great Skua
09. Atom
10. No Need To Cry
11. Open the Door
12. We Close Our Eyes
Total running time: 54' 37"

[British Sea Power - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[British Sea Power - Waving Flags - Video Clip]

"Resident Brightonites, British Sea Power, have never been a band to follow the crowd. Eccentric, whimsical and with the freedom that an indie label and insanely loyal fan base brings, each record has defied expectations. The seafarer's third album outing is, again, sent to test the limits of what we conceive as ‘rock’.

There's an intensely dark, churchlike presence running through Do You Like Rock Music?, dragging you under the pounding, rolling drums and chants. From opening track, "All In It" there's a distinctly lush, anthemic, Arcade Fire-tinged feel to the tracks. The Canadian's influence is all over this record with its violin arrangements and touches of organ. This is hardly surprising as Howard Bilerman, the Arcade's drummer on their debut, Funeral, is a player at the production - and part of the recording schedule even took in the crazy storms of Canada's landscape, with the sound of power lines snapping under the weight of ice.

Drenched in the rousing chanting behind Yan's lush, breathy vocals on "No Lucifier", or the stunning, layered epic guitar-scapes in "Waving Flags" - there's a real cerebral sense of rock at play here. It will undoubtedly make you gawp, when you see this kind of shattering reverb live at a festival this summer.

But it's not all about Canada on this record: Three albums in, the BSP have roped in three producers with the aforementioned Bilerman working alongside Graham Sutton (Jarvis Cocker, Bark Psychosis), and Efrim Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Recorded in locations as varied as Cornwall and the Czech Republic - it miraculously comes together without a hint of discombobulation.

There is some familiar territory here, "Down On The Ground" having already appeared on the band's recent EP, Krankenhaus? as well as the future BSP classic, "Atom". Yet it’s not all bombast. Do You like Rock Music? does have its quieter, less dramatic moments such as "No Need to Cry" and "The Great Skua" which vie for your attention with subtle detail revealed by multiple listens. Altogether it's an inventive and intriguing listen, never quite laying itself bare and all the more powerful when listened to in its entirety." [source]

[Download.Buy]

2007: A Music Odyssey

2007-12-23T10:23:00.000+01:00

I can feel my head throbbing. Maybe it's from all the music I had to hear to compile my favourite albums of the year list, or just maybe from all the alcohol intake of last night (you know you've drank waaaaayyy too much when you end the night in an 80's themed night pumping to the sound of Europe's "The Final Countdown"...). Anyway, here are some of the albums that did it for me during the year. I have sort of tried to organise them by categories (music genre or otherwise, five albums for each), allow me the pleasure to bend them to fit my likings.

Now where did I put that damned Dafalgan?

5 Experimental Albums

5.
MHV
EP 777
[21 Cycles (Ascn)]

4.
Legiac
Mings Feaner
[Dide Skin (snippet)]

3.
Supersilent
8
[8.4]

2.
Tied + Tickled Trio
Aelita
[Other Voices Other Rooms]

1.
Dopplereffekt
Calabi Yau Space
[Calabi Yau Manifold]

5 Ambient (Pop) Albums

5.
Valgeir Sigurðsson
Eqvílibríum
[Evolution Of Waters (snippet)]

4.
Ólafur Arnalds
Eulogy For Evolution
[0040]

3.
Epic45
May Your Heart Be The Map
[Winterbirds]

2.
Nest
Serein
[Kyoto]

1.
Stars Of The Lid
And Their Refinement Of The Decline
[Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)]

5 Night Albums

5.
Underworld
Oblivion With Bells
[Beautiful Burnout]

4.
Pantha Du Prince
This Bliss
[Saturn Strobe]

3.
DeepChord Presents: Echospace
The Coldest Season
[Abraxas]

2.
Burial
Untrue
[Archangel]

1.
Boxcutter
Glyphic
[Fieldtrip]

5 Chill Out Albums

5.
310
Sixes And Sevens
[Track 8 (snippet)]

4.
Matthew Dear
Asa Breed
[Deserter]

3.
Bjørn Torske
Feil Knapp
[Spelunker]

2.
Pedro
You, Me & Everyone
[Lung]

1.
Kim Hiorthøy
My Last Day
[Beats Mistake]

5 Dance Albums

5.
Digitalism
Idealism
[Idealistic]

4.
The Tuss
Rushup Edge
[Rushup I Bank 12]

3.
The Ace Of Clubs
Benefist
[Patriotic Acid]

2.
The Field
From Here We Go Sublime
[Everday]

1.
LCD Soundsystem
Sound Of Silver
[All My Friends]

5 Rock Albums

5.
Caribou
Andorra
[After Hours]

4.
Frog Eyes
Tears Of The Valedictorian
[Bushels]

3.
Arcade Fire
Neon Bible
[Neon Bible]

2.
Sunset Rubdown
Random Spirit Lover
[The Mending Of The Gown]

1.
Animal Collective
Strawberry Jam
[Fireworks]

5 Weird Folk Albums

5.
Crescent
Little Waves
[Little Waves]

4.
Múm
Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
[They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Explode]

3.
Devendra Banhart
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
[Seahorse]

2.
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan
Pullhair Rubeye
[Sis Around The Sandmill]

1.
Panda Bear
Person Pitch
[Bros]

5 Folk Rock Albums

5.
Iron & Wine
The Stage Names
[Carousel]

4.
Okkervil River
The Stage Names
[Unless It's Kicks]

3.
Bon Iver
For Emma, Forever Ago
[Skinny Love]

2.
Beirut
The Flying Club Cup
[A Sunday Smile]

1.
Andrew Bird
Armchair Apocrypha
[Pasticities]

5 Grin Albums

5.
Tunng
Good Arrows
[Bricks]

4.
Jens Lekman
Night Falls Over Kortedala
[A Postcard To Nina]

3.
Figurines
When The Deer Wore Blue
[The Air We Breathe]

2.
Misha
Teardrop Sweetheart
[Summersend]

1.
Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
[The Past Is A Grotesque Animal]

[Feel free to post your favourite albums below.]

Lost Tapes #3: Bohren & Der Club Of Gore

2007-12-19T12:52:00.000+01:00

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, with their self-proclaimed "horror jazz" sound, will keep you enchanted during the Christmas season.

Bio
"Founding BOHREN - members Thorsten Benning, Morten Gass, Reiner Henseleit and Robin Rodenberg started playing music together in 1988.

This Pre - BOHREN - era featured bands like CHRONICAL DIARRHOEA, 7 INCH BOOTS and MACABRE FARMHOUSE which played a metal-based hardcore in different varietys.

Driven by the idea of a more unique style of music, they formed BOHREN (german word for drilling) in 1992. As BOHREN they created an unholy ambient mixture of slow jazz ballads, BLACK SABBATH doom and down tuned AUTOPSY sounds.

1993 BOHREN recorded their debut 7”ep for Suggestion Records, in the same year they added “& THE CLUB OF GORE” to their name (to honour the dutch instrumental masters GORE).

1994 BOHREN released their first longplayer “gore motel”, followed by “midnight radio” in 1995, both on Epistrophy Records.

1996 Reiner Henseleit left the band.

In 1997 Christoph Clöser joined BOHREN and in this cast the band recorded the albums “sunset mission” (2000), “black earth” (2002) and “geisterfaust” (2005) for the Hamburg-based label WONDER." [source]

[Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Prowler - Video Clip]

[Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Midnight Black Earth - Video Clip]

[Note: If you're only going to pick one of these, then go for Sunset Mission. It's an absolute masterpiece.]

01. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Gore Motel" (1994)
[Download(password:Bohren)]

02. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Midnight Radio" (1995)
[Download(part1.part2)]

03. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Gore Motel" (1994) + "Midnight Radio" (1995)
[Download]

04. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Sunset Mission" (2000)
[Download]

05. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Black Earth" (2002)
[Download(part1.part2)]

06. Bohren & Der Club Of Gore "Geisterfaust" (2005)
[Download]

The Field "From Here We Go Sublime"

2007-12-18T20:16:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Field
Album: From Here We Go Sublime
Label: Kompakt
Release date: March 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno/Trance

Tracklisting:
01. Over The Ice
02. A Paw In My Face
03. Good Things End
04. The Little Heart Beats So Fast
05. Everday
06. Silent
07. The Deal
08. Sun & Ice
09. Mobilia
10. From Here We Go Sublime
Total running time: 65' 41"

[The Field - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Every track on the debut album of Axel Willner, the Swedish ambient techno producer behind the Field, feels both buoyant and wholly submerged in something horizon-fat and translucent. Listening to it is like holding your head under heated water with only one iPod earbud attached—vague, blurry, a snub of the eye that makes clarity seem so goddam dull. Look at From Here You Go Sublime’s ten-minute centerpiece, “The Deal.” Placed just after the record goes from its relatively floor-fit starter’s shot—if you can really call anything on From Here ‘floor-fit’—Willner begins to play strange with the moist, hypervisual atmospheres he’s worked up in the album’s first-half. After a stiff bass drum pulse and what sounds like an overworked refrigerator motor whirring, Willner splices in his patented severed vocal loops, and gives it a strangely beatific sense of gravitas. It’s a weightless sound that neglects the retina to the reverb and odd shimmer of senselessness, and it’s just one of ten smothered gems in what is surely a timeless entry in Kompakt’s catalogue.

Of course, not many will be surprised by the Field’s stunning debut record. Hyperbole and instant idolatry have been with him since his debut 2005 single on Kompakt, “Things Keep Fallin’ Down,” the b-side of which saw Willner slicing the Four Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” and other samples into a gorgeous reinterpretation of laser-guided melodies. With his second single “Sun & Ice,” three tracks from which are included here, it became clear that “Things” was no fluke but instead an introduction to a producer capable of the most perplexingly simple fusions—something again struck home by his scene-stealer on Pop Ambient 2007, “Kappsta.” But even with dance music’s oft-stated reshaping for the home listener and expert full-lengths the last few years from Matthew Dear, Alex Smoke, Lindstrom, Ellen Allien, My My, Gui Boratto, Pantha du Prince, etc., techno often still has a difficult time shaping its furious twelve-inch time cycles into the recline of the full-length. This ain’t an issue for the Field. From Here We Go Sublime may not be an evolution for Willner, but it’s a singular distillation of his talents into one album. Mixing gauzy shoegaze, slippery ambient loops, and two-cheeks-on-the-floor bass drum bounce, the Field offers an idyllic work of startling novelty, and perhaps ‘techno’’s most widely appreciable offering in years.

Evolving with a sense of cohesion and sly foresight that almost belies the album’s inclusion of past singles, From Here We Go Sublime is a success of temporal shifts and shy, first-morning sidesteps in mood akin to the way a day fills itself without your noticing—like how time often gets misinterpreted as its absence, just yesterday I was. . . Everything seems hyper-realistic, both its dances and its doldrums. He gently pokes and subdues, allowing you to forget moments just-gone and back now, but clearer the second time. And yet Willner manages to create something so hypnotic out of a seemingly effortless and basic set of ground-rules—something that’s bound to play to critics of From Here as Willner simply hitting on a good formula and overusing it.

But, more to the point, Willner’s precise reconstruction of old sounds and songs into these new, shimmering forms feels somehow old-hat and startlingly inventive. Both “A Paw in My Face” and “Good Things End” wind their AM gold samples—“Paw”’s coming from Lionel Richie’s “Hello”—around healthy beats in gentle progressions that mount into full-out disco struts, in ways you can’t help but feel Jason Forrest should be studying at short-arm’s length. The samples become rhythmic guitar parts to spell Willner’s exhaust of space, and the songs’ bold, simple beats have to play into their clear atmospheres or give into the expanse. On “The Little Heart Beats So Fast” though, perhaps the album’s most stunning inclusion barring its last, the Field stunts and grunts with his samples in a Perlon sense, adding them into the block of rhythms, hallucinatory, grandiose, and darkly ambiguous. Likewise, “Everyday” makes astral ambient techno out of its referentialism, dissolving just after the 2:30 mark to show you just what you were listening to, RPMs gear-stripped so everything’s clear. But that’s when it really settles into itself, with Willner’s vocal-circles upping the ante on atmospheric glee for the next twelve months.

But looking back at “Kappsta” specifically, it’s clear the Field likes to play the mope sometimes. Opener “Over the Ice”—from last year’s “Sun & Ice” single—chops shards of Kate Bush’s “Under the Ice” into a gale of shoegaze, while “Sun & Ice” puts the same MBV-like touchstones toward creating an elegant, almost sylvan suite of quietude. Near the album’s end, after the slight tidal shift of “The Deal,” “Mobilia” stitches its loops into trim pokes of synthetic strings, powderburst against its peppery drum-patterning—a rarity for Willner—and stretched taut until you hear the clean guitar sheen Willner may have been using all along.

Even given a nine-track familiarity with the Field’s techniques, closer “From Here We Go Sublime” will have you stinking. Starting with a stark tonal reverb like a church organ spilled through dented pipes, Willner’s at his loosest with his samples; his shadow teasing is more overt now, prodding your sense of both collective and personal history, tugging apart one of the more recognizable choruses in music to show you just how much atmospheric bliss he can make of something so naked of novelty. And just after wrinkling them into grandfather clock noises, tock-tock-whoosh, his loops slowly lengthen and uncurl, and at 2:14, Willner opens his hand to the Flamingos and their “sha-bob-sha-bob.” And, if you’re impressed—and you should be—you wonder why you didn’t hear it before. But, with a debut album like From Here We Go Sublime, it’s becoming clear that perhaps the only one intimately concerned with the spatial gospel of these records and sounds we’ve remembered to forget is the Field. And, hell, if he can give us another album so comforting in its creativity every few years, he’s entitled to our amnesia." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Sonic Process' Blind Test

2007-12-17T12:48:00.000+01:00

The first Sonic Process blind test competition is here! The winner will get a gift voucher, from his/her preferred online shop!

The competition is now over! Congratulations to Megabob for being the first to make the two correct guesses! The answers were Stars of the Lid with the track "Gasfarming" and Library Tapes with "Mellan Ljud Och Text".

Thanks to all the participants, maybe next time...

The competition will be in the form of a special kind of musical "blind test": it will consist of a single track, where two separate tracks are mixed together and played at the same time to form one cohesive composite track. Both tracks are played at their normal speed, and both tracks are played in full. The first one to correctly identify the two mixed tracks (artists + track titles), both of which have already been posted here, will win a 25 Euro (~37 US dollar) gift voucher to spend at his/her preferred online music shop (e.g. Amazon, Boomkat, Juno, etc.)!

The competition will start on Saturday, 15 December at 9pm GMT (check World Clock Time Zone Converter to convert to your local time). Then you will be able to stream/download the track from this post. In order to make the results as transparent as possible, participants will be required to use the shoutbox on this site to submit the artists + track titles (do NOT use e-mail). They will need to supply a valid e-mail address (write it on the "Website:" field). Incomplete or wrong guesses will be rejected, e.g. do not make life easier for others by posting a correct guess for only one of the two artists! The winner who makes the first correct guess (according to the time stamps on the shoutbox) will be contacted afterwards to receive his/her gift voucher.

Alternative link: [Download]

Good luck!

-sonic process

Rafael Anton Irisarri "Daydreaming"

2007-12-14T13:05:00.000+01:00

Artist: Rafael Anton Irisarri
Album: Daydreaming
Label: Miasmah
Release date: 12 February 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient/Modern Classical
RIYL: Library Tapes, Harold Budd, Deaf Center

Tracklisting:
01. Waking Expectations
02. A Thousand-Yard Stare
03. Wither
04. Lumberton
05. Voigt-Kampf
06. Fractal
07. A Glimpse
Total running time: 34' 07"

[Rafael Anton Irisarri - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Rafael Anton Irisarri - Lumberton - Video Clip]

[Rafael Anton Irisarri - Fractal - Video Clip]

"Deaf Center certainly know a thing or six about deeply affecting, piano-led compositions. 2005's "Pale Ravine" (out on Type Recordings) remains one of the most enthralling recorded documents in that field. "Daydreaming", by Seattle-based composer Rafael Anton Irissari, is my first foray into the Norwegian duo's impressive Miasmah imprint. Irisarri, himself, has a terrific pedigree, as well as sculpting captivating electro-acoustic sounds, he also curates the Kupei Muska label and serves on the board of directors for Seattle's Decibel Festival.

Using piano, synths and acoustic and electronic instruments his album, "Daydreaming" consists of seven beautifully crafted modern/classical compositions. Irisarri creates music that can be both epic and subdued, with dreamy textures floating effortlessly and dissolving into one another. "Lumberton" is a highlight that incorporates glittering piano tones and backward looped synths. It's a little less cinematic than Deaf Center, but a tad more aggressive than Goldmund. The listener can only bask in its shimmering beauty.

"Voigt-kampff" (surely named after the polygraph test to determine replicants in "Bladerunner") recalls the glacial intensity of Radiohead's "Treefingers", while, "Fractal" employs barely audible beats, reminiscent of Gas' "Konigsforst". The vinyl crackles only serve to heighten the tension, as shimmering synths and fluctuating textures hover and blend.

Much like Wes Willenbring's "Somewhere Someone Else", this album is full of atmospherics, lulling piano tones and multi-layered instrumentation. Ending with the introspective "A Glimpse", you are left with a complete sense of calm and relaxation. With just under 35 minutes worth of imaginative piano-led pieces, it may not be breaking any new ground, but "Daydreaming" is utterly gorgeous all the same. Which should warrant further investigation into the Miasmah collective." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Supersilent "8"

2007-12-13T13:34:00.000+01:00

Artist: Supersilent
Album: 8
Label: Rune Grammofon
Release date: 17 September 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Jazz/Noise Rock/Experimental
RIYL: Deathprod, Sunn O))), Triosk

Tracklisting:
01. 8.1
02. 8.2
03. 8.3
04. 8.4
05. 8.5
06. 8.6
07. 8.7
08. 8.8
Total running time: 68' 17"

"Norwegian entity Supersilent have become master at confusion. With albums and tracks carrying chronological numbers as sole mean of identification, it should be quite easy to keep up with the band’s progress, yet 8 is only their fifth album in the traditional sense, their fifth if 7, which, despite featuring all new material, was only released as a DVD, is to be counted. They have, over the years, unashamedly treaded the boundaries of jazz and avant-garde and thrived on the energy they have drawn from both, without ever committing to any. The only constant in their work, apart from personnel head count and the aforementioned numerical cataloguing, is the way each of their record has been built from lengthy improv sessions, with no overdubs, and usually recorded in a handful of days.

Formed of Ståle Storløkken (keyboards), Jarle Vespestad (drums), Helge Sten (electronics) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Supersilent celebrate ten years together this year, and this new album shows the band as fresh and hungry for experimentation and new sounds as ever. After the harsh and convoluted terrains of 1-3, the smoother ride of 4, the resolutely reflective 5, the visions of grandeur of 6 and the multi-sensorial feast of 7, 8 finds Supersilent tuned to particularly abstract musical forms and extremely contrasted conditions. The lexicon used here is characteristic of the band’s work, but, as is the case with every new Supersilent record, it is applied in a way that bears only vague resemblance to previous outputs. Culled from over five hours of improvisation, 8 was at one point envisaged as a double, and even a triple, album. Instead, the band have crammed a substantial amount of music and silences in just under seventy minutes.

Overall, 8 is a rather subdued and introvert piece, with the quartet only opening up to monumental sound amalgamations on 8.7. 8.1 slowly builds electric tension and gains density all the way through its eleven minutes before eventually imploding and collapsing over itself, while 8.3 swims against the current of disjointed drums sequences to provides breathing space for the grinding guitar noises that coagulate in the background. The rest of the album is surprisingly ethereal and, occasionally, melodic, with 8.4 and 8.5 giving Henriksen the best opportunities to take the lead for a moment. On 8.6, the ground becomes very uneven and abstract, with electronics fizzing up like bubbles on the side of a glass while Henriksen hangs little vocal droplets in the latter part of the track. The concluding track, 8.8, is perhaps the most sober on offer here and brings this latest incursion into Supersilent territory to a gentle close.

Ten years on from their first collaborative work, Supersilent continue to define their unique sonic space away from pretty much the rest of the music scene. With 8, they once again unveils new grounds and expand on previous work, capturing yet another side of their multi-faceted identity." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Stars Of The Lid "The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid"

2007-12-12T14:27:00.000+01:00

Artist: Stars Of The Lid
Album: The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid [2 CDs]
Label: Kranky
Release date: 9 October 2001
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient/Modern Classical
RIYL: Deaf Center, Fennesz, Eluvium

Tracklisting:

CD 1
01. Requiem For Dying Mothers, Part 1
02. Requiem For Dying Mothers, Part 2
03. Down 3
04. Austin Texas Mental Hospital, Part 1
05. Austin Texas Mental Hospital, Part 2
06. Austin Texas Mental Hospital, Part 3
07. Broken Harbors, Part 1
08. Broken Harbors, Part 2
09. Broken Harbors, Part 3

CD 2
01. Mullholland
02. The Lonely People (Are Getting Lonelier)
03. Gasfarming
04. Piano Aquieu
05. Fac 21
06. Ballad Of Distances, Part 1
07. Ballad Of Distances, Part 2
08. A Lovesong (For Cubs)+, Part 1
09. A Lovesong (For Cubs)+, Part 2
10. A Lovesong (For Cubs)+, Part 3

Total running time: 123' 54"

[Stars Of The Lid - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

"Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid have traveled far in the six years since their debut, 1995's Music for Nitrous Oxide. But. They. Continue. To. Move. Very. Slowly. That promising first record combined crude guitar feedback with some snippets of religious radio programming that the band captured in their home state of Texas. It was all likely laid down on a four-track in some living room arranged around a double-barreled bong. Music for Nitrous Oxide was a noble and affecting work of home recording, showing that the DIY aesthetic could be incorporated into experimental drone music just as easily as guitar-based pop.

But The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid finds these guys fully harnessing the power of the studio, with striking results. Strings and horns are all over this record, and the richer palate gives the drones added weight and depth. In 1989, new music pioneer Pauline Oliveros recorded an amazing album called Deep Listening inside a 2,000,000-gallon steel tank, and the feel of The Tired Sounds is similar. Like the Oliveros record, the listener is meant to focus attention on the subtle build and decay inside these layered drones. Slight breaks in harmony between a violin and a shard of guitar feedback carry serious emotional weight. The half-second decay of a breathless French horn resonates like a perfect chord change. Silence becomes another instrument.

The Tired Sounds is an exceptionally long album-- two CDs or three LPs-- with six multi-part suites over the course of about two hours. If this were the latest collection of 2Pac rarities, we'd be talking serious sonic overkill, but music that evolves this slowly needs plenty of time to stretch out. Hence, nothing about this lengthy album feels at all bloated or extraneous.

The first three-part piece bears the jaunty title "Requiem for Dying Mothers," and the music itself is fitting. Thick cello harmonies weave between guitar drones that have a bright, almost Celtic quality. Changes are paid out slowly over the course of close to seven minutes, until the track opens up in its second part, introducing periods of silence and deep, foreboding bass pedals. Eventually, the band's penchant for field recording rears its head, as the 20-minute "Requiem" transforms into a gothic piece, with spare piano and unnamable radio transmissions.

"Austin Texas Mental Hospital" keeps the party going over the next 20 minutes, as guitar feedback and a larger orchestra modulate between two chords, rocking back and forth slowly like a self-stimming resident of the facility that gives the piece its name. The second part of the track reminds me of the Peter Gabriel soundtrack to Birdy, with hints of mechanical breathing interspersed with throbbing bass tones and a hanging drone in the middle register.

The second disc has a relatively lighter tone, with more space around the instruments, more keyboards, and less guitar feedback. "Mullholland" seems like it could be an audition tape for the forthcoming David Lynch film of a similar name, glowing with menace like a freshly waxed, cherry-red vanity ride. "Piano Aquieu," though, is the real find on this disc-- a minimal piece for treated keyboards, piano and organ, with a yearning melody and a half-hearted promise of redemption.

The strings return in force on "Fac 21," joining in a thick, Youngian drone. The piano-based "Ballad of Distances" recalls Labradford as heard through the ventilation shaft at Alcatraz, and the three-part "A Lovesong (For Cubs)" incorporates horns and cellos for a more conventional, but no less affecting sound.

With each record, Stars of the Lid seem to assess what tools are at their disposal and then set about seeing how they can maximize the result. Their continued explorations into more varied instrumentation and richer sonics are a smashing success. Still, in their crowded field, it's hard to say exactly what makes Stars of the Lid so special. It comes to mind that their relentless commitment to subtlety sets them apart, as does their masterful hand with tone. Throughout The Tired Sounds, dissonance is doled out in small portions, perfectly coloring the sculpted fields of sound." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Arcade Fire "Christmas Album"

2007-12-11T08:14:00.000+01:00

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: Christmas Album
Label: Unreleased
Recording date: 2002
Genre: Rock
Style: Lo-Fi/Indie Rock

Tracklisting:
01. Chestnuts Roasting
02. Oh Holy Night
03. Jinglebell Rock
04. A Very Arcade Xmas
05. It Clouded Fully (Brendan)
06. The Spartans (Brendan)
07. In The Attic (Boston)
08. Asleep At The Wheel
09. Old Flame
10. Submarine
11. In The Backseat
12. Headlights
Total running time: 47' 35"

[Arcade Fire - Laika - Video Clip]

"Arcade Fire's 2002 Christmas Album was recorded well before the band's first EP and the full length Funeral and never officially released. It was recorded at a party in Win and Régine's apartment, and Win claims that he is not singing in the recordings. Instead, his friends imitate his voice. Copies were distributed to friends and family of the band and some digital copies still circulate on file-sharing sites today.

The album features a quirky mix of holiday covers and early versions of original songs—some of which were later released as part of Arcade Fire EP and Funeral." [source]

[Download]

Sonic Process' 1 Year Anniversary

2007-12-06T11:07:00.000+01:00

It's been a year already! Wow, how time flies... I never thought it could have lasted this long. What started out as a hobby of mine turned into full-fledged mp3 blog that I'm actually proud of. Thank you all for keep visiting in ever increasing numbers, without you this blog would have died long ago.

I hope you have enjoyed listening to some of these albums as much as I did. They reflect the music I like to listen to and discover, and even if came to regret some of the albums that were posted here in the past, most of them were very enjoyable to my ears. I will make a round-up of some of my personal favourites before the year's end, in order to make sure you don't miss some of the finest sounds 2007 had to offer.

To commemorate this one-year anniversary, and with Christmas approaching and all that, I will be running a competition. This will start sometime in the near future (when I actually get the time to post it), but I can already say that it will be in the form of a special kind of musical "blind test": given that a one-track blind test would be simply too easy, this one will consist of a single track, where two separate tracks are mixed together and played at the same time to hopefully form one cohesive composite track. The first one to correctly identify the two mixed tracks (artists + track titles), both of which have already been posted here, will win a 25 Euro (~37 US dollar) gift voucher to spend at his/her preferred online music shop! Stay tuned, I will announce the starting date and time for the competition in the near future.

I take this opportunity to reach out for anyone wanting to contribute to this site with their own posts. If you have some time to kill, and you would like to promote some of the artists you like, then do get in touch. Absolutely no pre-requisites are needed other than a passion for music. Basic teaching on blogging can be arranged if necessary, and I will do my best to provide any download links you may request. Anyone interested should send me an e-mail: sonicprocess.blogspot@gmail.com

-sonic process

The Mountain Goats "The Sunset Tree"

2007-12-06T08:35:00.000+01:00

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Album: The Sunset Tree
Label: 4AD
Release date: 24 April 2005
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock
RIYL: Neutral Milk Hotel, Okkervil River, The Decemberists

Tracklisting:
01. You Or Your Memory
02. Broom People
03. This Year
04. Dilaudid
05. Dance Music
06. Dinu Lipatti's Bones
07. Up The Wolves
08. Lion's Teeth
09. Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod
10. Magpie
11. Song For Dennis Brown
12. Love Love Love
13. Pale Green Things
Total running time: 39' 35"

[The Mountain Goats - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[The Mountain Goats - Dance Music - Unofficial Video Clip]

"Let’s imagine that since 1991, John Darnielle has been traveling in reverse. At the onset of the 90’s, he faded into a dignified obscurity, weaving cryptic miniatures of Just About Anyone, stories that were both thematically universal and inaccessibly anonymous. His tender visions were filtered through a reverence for Petronius, whose Satyricon saw Rome, top-down, circa AD 61 in much the same way he pictured a lover’s transcendent reunion (gun-strapped) in Georgia, a cruelly hyperbolic passion for the Chicago Cubs, or a house full of meth-heads—enthrallingly human. He had achieved a quiet self-effacement, pouring his unmistakable voice out to the smallest of die-hard audiences, reigning in no-fi poetry with the help of a few stray guests and the blessings of modern boombox technology. (These documents were originally released on cassette and 7”, and only properly re-released at the turn of the decade on the Protein Source of the Future…Now!, Bitter Melon Farm, and Ghana compilations.)

In April 2005, the Mountain Goats appeared with The Sunset Tree, an album sprawling vivaciously across the spectrum of emotion and intellect, chronicling the painful youth of its singer, from self-medicating a nasty case of Abusive Stepfather with quality prescription narcotics, large headphones, and the volume knob, to learning to understand, survive, and grow through the cracks. It’s the album so many prolific singer-songwriters would try to make first; if Darnielle’s 90’s material presented the listener with little recourse from his idiosyncrasies, The Sunset Tree offers clearer avenues of attention and appreciation. His terse, sympathetic lyrical view occasionally rests on the superb contributions of his band, and he tackles the subjects closest to himself (though not always the most accessible) with the support of producer John Vanderslice’s rich, sparkling ambiences. (Incidentally, it’s easily the most sonically engaging of his “studio” records.) It’s no victory lap, nor does it feel like Darnielle is wading into memory for lack of a subject; The Sunset Tree is one of the most volatile, affecting and coherent records he’s made yet.

Darnielle’s lyrics are often funny, in a heartbreaking “isn’t life so just like that, how we have these beating hearts and they get out of control and we act a fool” kind of way. Characteristically, his best moments are an unusual blend of superhuman bitterness and performative melodrama, like the teeth-on-brick damnation of “In my life, I hope I lie, and tell everyone you were a good wife, and I hope you die, I hope we both die” from Tallahassee’s “No Children.” The best Mountain Goats material can make you laugh as often as it might make you crumble. The humor of The Sunset Tree, however, holds some punches. In Darnielle’s tragicomedies the main characters are voluntary victims—of drugs, alcohol, or what have you. Like the “The Fall of the High School Running Back” into an acid deal gone bad from 2002’s All Hail West Texas “your grandfather rode the boat over from Ireland, but you made a bad decision or two, yeah.”

Here, the suffering is at the hands of a tyrant, the stepfather, and the humor never comes with the dynamic of oppression. Instead, it’s the portraits of youth’s deep confusions: getting drunk and punching a video game console because it’s the only way you know how to say “I’m a virile adolescent and I’m pissed and that’s cool,” filling up your notebook with reasons not to freeze to death (the angst!), or feeling too untouchably awesome to care about your imminent arrest because you’ve got sweet dance music blaring from your stereo. It hovers so close because like life, it’s often unfair, unpoetic, plain contradictory, and retrospectively embarrassing—few of Darnielle’s stories have chronicled passions so unadorned and believable.

On the whole chronology thing: forget it, because it couldn’t have happened. The Sunset Tree charts the evolution of a maturity, and arrives at a place Darnielle has never been before. Our narrator starts the record slightly haywire, a confused youth maxing out on the raw nerves of bitterness and hope. “Dilaudid” is one of the most startling songs in their catalog, a swarming set of interlocking cello lines masterfully articulated by Erik Friedlander with Darnielle’s quaking tearfully at the center, delivering easily the most harrowing vocal of his career—no small feat for a guy who has spent a good portion of the last ten years searching for the perfect blend of violence and fragility. By “The Day That Dennis Brown Died,” he’s wondering about his own mortality, and like all of Darnielle’s work, it turns outward before reflecting inward, musing on the uninterrupted state of the world as a single life expires.

“Love Love Love” is going to put some people off; it rocks gentler than a nursery rhyme and references more, cough, controversial parts of the career of Kurt Cobain, but it also achieves meditative distance unlike anything he’s ever written. Said the wounded son to his stepfather, in a moment of empathy, “Now we see things, as in a mirror dimly, then we shall see each other face to face.” No raging passions here, but elliptical references to the staggering difficulty of parsing out each input of our most complex emotions, folding in Crime and Punishment’s conflicted murderer/imminent Christian Raskalnikov, a glimpse at Sonny Liston moments before his fight with Cassius Clay in 1964 (which many suspect was thrown for money), and the suicide of King Saul, who ended his life as the first king of the Hebrews to escape capture by the Philistines. These songs are memories unearthed after years of treading different paths. It’s psychic distance that turns these painful situations from red-eyed nightmares into emotional koans; was King Saul’s suicide out of love? For his people? For himself?

On “Pale Green Things,” the stepfather dies, years later, “at last,” a vocal lilt that picks the listener up only to let them slide down the tensions of the last forty minutes. Like “seaweed and Indiana saltgrass,” the narrator only then feels his own pale greenness, the humble statement of an organism poised for growth. During the climactic “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod” some songs earlier, the narrator vows that despite his abuse and hardships, “one of these days, I’m gonna wriggle up on dry land.” The analog is apt; The Sunset Tree is what came first, but the experiences only set the course for evolution. " [source]

[Download.Buy]

Robert Wyatt "Comicopera"

2007-12-04T08:29:00.000+01:00

Artist: Robert Wyatt
Album: Comicopera
Label: Domino
Release date: 8 October 2007
Genre: Rock
Style: Art Rock/Jazz
RIYL: Mark Hollis, David Sylvian, Nick Drake

Tracklisting:
Act One: Lost In Noise
01. Stay Tuned
02. Just As You Are
03. You You
04. A.W.O.L
05. Anachronist
Act Two: The Here And The Now
06. A Beautiful Peace
07. Be Serious
08. On The Town Square
09. Mob Rule
10. A Beautiful War
11. Out Of The Blue
Act Three: Away With The Fairies
12. Del Mondo
13. Cancion De Julieta
14. Pastafari
15. Fragment
16. Hasta Siempre Comandante
Total running time: 60' 39"

"What will you be doing when you're sixty-two? Now there's a frightening thought...unless you've already reached the age of Robert Wyatt and know already. And if you have, you'll be able to marvel more than most about his continued sharp state of musical and lyrical mind.

Comicopera misleads with its title, meaning the Greek definition of comedy as in 'human foibles'. The opera bit rings true, however, as we find an album divided into three acts - Lost in Noise, The Here and The Now, and Away with the Fairies. Each section finds Wyatt indulging in a myriad of musical styles, with jazz the most prevalent.

Yet while the last section of the opera may outstay its welcome somewhat, this is an incredibly well fused and structured album that taps into a wide range of emotions. Wyatt remains clearly affected by the issues of the day, and in particular war. Such is the intensity of his feeling for the current crusades that he turns his back on Western language for the third part of the triptych.

His instrumentation, too, becomes fractured and confused. After Out Of The Blue paints a vivid portrait of a disappearing world Wyatt lets loose in Cancion De Julieta with a gathering of tremolo strings, followed by a complicated web of vibraphones in Pastafari.

The first two sections are tuneful, even contented at times. You You has a blissful awakening with its dreamy trumpet reminiscent of Autumn Leaves, while the intimacy of the solemn overture, Anja Garbarek's Stay Tuned, brings Wyatt and his band into the room with you.

Central to The Here And The Now, and indeed the whole album, is the brightly coloured On The Town Square, rich in steelpan, trumpet and saxophone, the latter rising euphorically to the top. It's the emotional peak of the album, from which the record has trouble recovering.

Comicopera, then, is quite a journey, in the hands of an artist who, refreshingly for these event-hungry times, is not in a hurry. He makes you think, contemplate, rejoice and scowl. And for that we owe him." [source]

[Download.Buy]

Panda Bear's 2007 Summer Tour

2007-12-03T22:50:00.000+01:00

Panda Bear has released a free DVD of his Summer tour!

From Mike's website:

"Please bear with me as I try to explain this DVD because it isn't exactly your average DVD or your average release and its kinda weird.

First of all, I'm not part of a special film crew, a web-design team, or a label. I'm a regular dude who likes to film shows. I'm by no means a professional however I do my best to take a good shot. I have a site over at eattapes.com that you can check out if you'd like.

Shortly after hearing about Panda Bear's tour for his latest album, Person Pitch, I thought it would be sweet if I were able to come along and film a complete (although short) tour. I got in touch with a highly psyched Noah and after some planning we were good to go. I went to Baltimore, Philly, and New York and complied an extensive collection of footage from all three nights. We decided it would be cool if we created a DVD from the videos.

Here is some further information on the DVD:
• Contains a full performance of Panda Bear's set. I will take the audio from the best recording and edit the three sets' videos together to make one cohesive performance.
•Also contains sound checks, a Panda Bear interview, and other random footage.
• One song by each opener.
• I am a firm believer that the greatest things in life aught to be free, music being one of those things. Because of this and my respect, appreciation, and gratitude for Panda Bear, there is no necessary charge for this DVD. It will be free.

Now, I feel there is one snag to this otherwise awesome project. To film at the Bowery Ballroom is a $250 charge. I accept the cost and if I don't make that money back, that's fine. It was worth it to make this DVD that much better. However, I have created a BONUS disk that I will package along with this DVD. The disk will contain all two full, unedited sets. I have also created art for each DVD + Bonus Disk order and package them in real DVD casings. For this disk I will be asking a donation from $5-$10 on a sliding scale. I will keep track of the money I make on this site so everyone would be able to see how the generosity of few can really add up quickly. If I reach the goal of $250 I will donate half of the earnings to Paw Tracks.

Thanks so much for reading and being interested in the DVD. Look to the News section for further updates and information.

Take care.
--mike" [source]

[Download]

Telefon Tel Aviv "Map Of What Is Effortless"

2007-12-02T22:31:00.001+01:00

Artist: Telefon Tel Aviv
Album: Map Of What Is Effortless
Label: Hefty
Release date: 27 January 2004
Genre: Electronic
Style: Glitch/Downtempo/Ambient Techno
RIYL: Apparat, Dntel, Four Tet

Tracklisting:
01. When It Happens It Moves All By Itself
02. I Lied [Feat. Damon Aaron]
03. My Week Beats Your Year [Feat. Lindsay Anderson]
04. Bubble And Spike [Feat. Lindsay Anderson]
05. Map Of What Is Effortless
06. Nothing Is Worth Losing That [Feat. Damon Aaron]
07. What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It
08. What It Was Will Never Again [Feat. Lindsay Anderson]
09. At The Edge Of The World You Will Still Float [Feat. Damon Aaron]
Japanese edition bonus tracks:
10. Jouzu Desu Ne
11. Sound In A Dark Room [Feat. Lindsay Anderson]
Total running time: 45' 15"

[Telefon Tel Aviv - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]

[Telefon Tel Aviv - When It Happens It Moves All By Itself - Unofficial Video Clip]

"The first great album of 2004 has already arrived. From the opening swell of the Loyola University Chamber Orchestra crashing through a giant barbed wire fence of glitched stabs of sliced beats, to the closing wall of found sounds of "At the Edge of the World You Will Still Float", it is plainly obvious. Telefon Tel Aviv has advanced the art of the laptop album to beautifully refined heights with A Map of What is Effortless, the follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut.

The duo of Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper has infused this album with so much soul and sweat that it is destined to go down as a classic of the genre. Never resting on a repeating loop or groove, nor filling the LP with a couple of "mood pieces" to accompany the real standouts, Telefon Tel Aviv is the real deal, as special to electronic music as a young Jeff Buckley was to singer/songwriters.

Flawlessly produced and engineered, Map of What is Effortless combines the organic sounds of real pianos and flutes (and chamber orchestras) with some of the best glitch sounds this side of Dntel. An always exciting ebb and flow of the gentle ("When It Happens It Moves All by Itself"), with the humorous ("My Week Beats Your Year"), it is the sheer unpretentious audacity of a young duo on the rise that allows A Map of What is Effortless to sound so... well, effortless.

While most of the tracks feature vocals of some kind (usually distorted, stretched and affected in some magical way), even the instrumental pieces hold their own as standouts, which is often not the case with albums such as this. The LP's first truly heart-wrenching moment comes with the elegantly floating "Bubble and Spike", where an angelic sounding Lindsay Anderson sings among slices and pops of beats and snippets of her own impossibly layered vocals. It brings to mind the best efforts of Everything But the Girl and Sigur Rós and it's especially affecting coming as it does immediately after "My Week Beats Your Year", where Anderson plays the role of a ridiculously arrogant club girl, out to prove in an elegantly-wasted deadpan that her fabulous jet-set life carries the same frequent expectancy as your going to the grocer.

The LP's title track again uses the Loyola University Chamber Orchestra to conjure up a Craig Armstrong-inspired bed of strings that acts as a relaxing intermission to the fried beats of the album's first half, before breaking down into a coral reef of sliced-up abstraction.

"Nothing is Worth Losing That", the album's sixth cut, has the same mastery of momentum that the aforementioned Sigur Rós uses to such effective extremes on their records. Bursting with walls of sound just as the listener expects it all to fade into silence, and then breaking everything down to its simplest parts when the moment seems almost too big to stay intact, it is a masterful display of arrangement, and structure.

"What it Was Will Never Again" is the most Sigur Rós-inspired cut of the entire album, sounding as if it could have come right off of ( ). But Telefon Tel Aviv hold it back, and simply end the cut just as Sigur Rós would have blown the roof off the building with a majestic wall of guitar. I'm not sure it works entirely, as it seems as if there isn't much point in building to such heights only to end it as if it never existed, but nevertheless... It might be the one flaw on an otherwise flawless collection.

Damon Aaron returns to close out the LP with "At the Edge of the World You Will Still Float", which sits somewhere between Seal and the Broadway Project, as all of the album's ideas and sounds come together for a final bow. It's a fitting ending to a record that packs a lot of those ideas in, without ever coming across as anything but cohesive.

Map of What is Effortless may very well be Telefon Tel Aviv's bid for stardom, as the duo takes the sounds and ideas of their 2001 debut, Fahrenheit Fair Enough, and expands them to new heights. Its structure and more mainstream feel may alienate some fans of their early work, but it would be unjustified as it is undoubtedly clear that Telefon Tel Aviv have created something of a minor classic here, one that will no doubt grace quite a few writers' year-end lists, and if there's any justice in the world, the shelves of quite a few record collections as well." [source]

[Download.Download Japanese edition (password:ewang).Buy]