KILLED in CARS

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2011-07-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

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PROMOS: I only accept physical promos, not downloads. If you believe your music fits my site, please send your tapes/CDs/vinyl to:

KILLED in CARS
c/o Paul Banks
16901 Oakmont Drive
Apt #18
Omaha, NE 68136

Evan Parker - Whitstable Solo (Psi, 2010)

2010-05-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

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Given the impressive size of his back catalogue (measured both in depth and breadth), it is easy to approach a new Evan Parker album with trepidation. This reaction is understandable; it seems almost natural to expect that after decades of output, an artist or band must begin churning out steaming turds -- with age it all comes undone, or something like that. So then Mr. Parker's forty-odd (fifty?) year tenure should make him an octogenarian, or at least someone who you would not like to see behind an automobile. Yet Whitstable Solo, along with Evan Parker's other recent releases -- like Relevance, out this year with Dave Liebman and Tony Bianco, on Red Toucan --, stand up alongside the classics in this free jazz elder statesman's discography.

Psi records (see comments section for historical details) has made a name for itself (partly) by reissuing old and out of print free improv records, many on which Parker played. Whitstable Solo, on the other hand, is a collection of eight songs performed in 2008 at Whistable, UK -- seven of which were live and in front of an audience, while the remaining track was squeaked out before the crowd had arrived.

The jams start in typical Parker fashion, with a cyclic squall of soprano sax nonsense lasting nearly twenty minutes. This is definitive Parker, pioneered way back on Saxophone Solos, and now, to my ears, one of the most easily recognizable styles in jazz. The haze brought on by Parker's relentless upper register recedes in the midsections of this album, revealing a tender and uncharacteristically gossamer sound. The sixth solo is, dare I say, almost melodic! But purist shouldn't fret, for Evan Parker's shrill saxophone reemerges in the final two tracks, obliterating any lingering sense that this gent is softening.

Each passage may have antecedent within Parker's own catalogue. In the solo setting, it may be too much to expect truly unique and new material; however, in collaboration, Evan is still redefining the boundaries of his instrument (see 2009's C-Section, with John Wiese). Even so, this album is a delight; I would love as many "derivative" solo albums from Evan Parker as possible.

Peter Ablinger - Voices and Piano (Kairos, 2009)

2010-05-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

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Here's another from docperkins (and I strongly recommend it):

Some people believe that a photograph captures the soul and fend-off a camera as if the essence of their being is about to be abducted at the imminence of a click. Ablinger atonal works operate along the same capturing principle, extracting the music of celebrities’ speeches, concomitantly to the celebrities uttering that speech. The phantasmatic Other of the utterance acquire shape, inasmuch as the meaning that fulfilled the utterance is discarded on behalf of a structure that dispenses with inner meaning, given that it is a derived musical form. And then some.

In 1968 Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes pronounced the author dead. The two Latino poststructuralist thinkers demonstrated that it was about time to stop considering authors as almighty producer of meanings and unique sources of signification. Along these lines authors should not bear the ultimate interpretations of works of art in general, not even of their own artistic productions. The death of the author proclaimed by Foucault and Barthes became a cornerstone for a radical understanding of modern aesthetical production and consumption of art.

I could see this radical des-authorisation coming in music. If one takes a close glimpse into the recent history of serialisms, one can perceive that the trend had been pulsating in-between the lines and as palimpsests in outrageously insightful works, e.g., Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio and Salvatore Sciarrino, these illustrious offspring of Anton Webern. However, no one had stared in the eyes of the issue as Ablinger is hereby doing.

The matter was not to aestheticise the death of the author in the best ‘middle-class tradition’ of celebrating losses with phoney messes, but rather to take the death of the author as a template for aesthetic practice and criticism. The word of order would be, therefore, to extract music from the supply of meanings that in modernity had been monopolised by the Author through spoken and written narratives. The point is that there is music in that monopoly; words in sequence can only come to being meaningfully in music. So, how this music would sound like if played side by side with the narrative, seemed to be an exciting working programme, which Ablinger takes up while killing the author, akin to Foucault agenda. The latter is radical: by killing the author playing music without a composer it displays, by the same token, the ontological limits of improvisation in music.

Come to think of it, how can music derived from spoken discourses be considered improvised if its structure is given by the author’s eagerness to make sense (to ‘make meaning’)? Furthermore, how can music derived from eagerness to make sense not be improvised, given that the authors of those discourses had no intentions to make music while talking sense? Improvisation in music, proves Ablinger, is the worshiping of an unsung god, or counting on help from an unknown, invisible hero. There will always be a hidden structure somewhere in the unconscious making sure that that which was deemed improvised is pure symptom. And what is a symptom but a field- marshal of desire, and what is desire but the ontological grammar of a subjectivity, and what is a discourse but an attempt to rationalise that symptom, and what is Ablinger’s aesthetics but the sound of the symptom?

Ablinger says that “actually the piano part is the analysis of the voice. Music analyses reality”. I beg to differ, and will hereby engage the same principle he, unbeknownst to himself, used, which is the one of the death of the author. Ablinger shall not have the ultimate interpretation claim over his achievement. He appears to be perfectly aware of what he did, but not at all of what he did does. The music is not analysing reality. The music at stake is the Real or, in other words, the unconscious non-symbolised counterpart of the reality of the discourses. Therefore, music could not analyse reality. What it does instead is to promise that without music ideas can neither be produced nor conveyed in spoken form. Consequently, the fear of this kind of music is the fear of making sense, and to stop making sense is the inability to perceive music.

Foucault asserts that once the death of the author is properly carried out “all discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the anonymity of murmur”. Ablinger brings up this funeral murmur to irreverent, mesmerising music. Let us rejoice, finally a modern requiem was composed to mourn the death of the Author and celebrate the re-birth of meaning. The requiem, alas, is atonal.

Rdeča Raketa - Old Girl, Old Boy (Mosz, 2010)

2010-05-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

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Rdeča Raketa is a Vienna-based duo comprised of Maja Osojnik and Matija Scdellander, whose 2010 collaborative cassette, “Old Girl, Old Boy,” combines their admirable and respective training in electronic and improvised music composition. “Old Girl, Old Boy” is a contextual and exploratory digital/acoustic collage that demands: 1) literally putting yourself on the electronic device table to comprehend (or not) the complex fusion of these often abrasive, wacky, yet tremendously skillful sounds; and 2) freeing yourself to be a part of whatever adventure on which the entire 37-minute track might take you. In other words, like the composed improvisation itself, the listening experience simultaneously demands intensive focus as much as it does an ability to go with it, wherever the heck that might be.

The first half or so of this cassette appears to be a cry for help, but I don’t mean this in the sense that anyone or anything needs help. The abstract sounds created by the sub-bass recorder, e-bass, and a mish-mash of indistinguishable electronic trinkets appear to emerge from a deserted electro-acoustic island of sorts. The clicks, bumps, loops, drones, human voices, and bass tones, all underscored for the first ten minutes by a constant state of electronic panic, never seem to reach any grounding or final destination. The first half, in sum, is an uncertain and sparse call composed of choppy SOS signals (sometimes human, sometimes not, but always nature-culture). The first part of the latter half (“half” here is defined simply by time; the piece itself has no obvious starts or stops, never mind halves, quarters, etc.), however, sees these sounds reaching the mainland for the first time, a dark, somewhat hopeful, ambient land/soundscape where the panic subsides, even if temporarily, before a sense of uncertainty takes over again around the 25-minute mark, or around the time when a human joins us again for a few seconds, only to disappear rather unsettlingly.

“Old Girl, Old Boy” is brilliantly disconcerting, and, admittedly, will take a few more listens before I really get what might be going on. Spending more time with this album may or may not be a good thing, though, because those big jungle birds sound really fucking creepy.

Christopher Canning

Ido Govrin - Moraine (Interval Records, 2010)

2010-05-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

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A Moraine is a geological phenomena; the accumulation of unconsolidated debris, soil and rocks compacted under glacial drifts. Over time these assemblages of loose matter form topographic features gradually exposed to the surface world by retreating glaciers.

Govrins' work evokes this process. Particles of sound are held in a state of suspension, encapsulated by frosty ambiance. Gradual drifts transform his soundscape, tracing subtle patterns of force and revealing contours over time. The naming of the tracks illustrates the variety of forces found in the formation of Moraine, thus mapping distinct processes of geological change; Ground, Push, Lateral, Terminal, Medial, Recessional.

Drawing on a sonic palette of processed cello and violin alongside digital sound synthesis, Govrin has created a work that feels compacted, cold and timeless. Through listening we participate in the process of glacial compression; to be buried deep beneath moving mountains of ice. There are moments that are stark, crystalline and beautiful as in Ground, where cello and violin weave elegiac tones through waves of distortion, and Medial which presents a world of crackling drones punctuated by ghostly and transitory string harmonics.

Comparisons can be drawn with Hildur Gudnadottir's Without Sinking, which is built around a similarly frosty, bleak and expansive use of cello and signal processing. At times reminiscent of the electro-acoustic music of Iannis Xenakis, Govrin engages in a comparable attempt to map features of the natural world through composed sound. Well produced and based on an engaging premise, this is a novel work that succeeds in subsuming our imaginations in geological phenomena.

Fíacha O' Dúbhda

Shamek Farrah - First Impressions (Strata-East 1974)

2010-04-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

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If the universe operated in accordance with my own personal whims and motives, then KiC would phase out this whole avant-classical thing it's gotten itself entrenched in and start posting really great jazz records again. I'm going to try to get the ball rolling with what in my eyes is at least a very good one. First Impressions made - at the risk of sounding like a complete ass - a truly great first impression. Shamek Farrah makes a kind of modal jazz, occassionally slipping into free territory, that at first glance reminded me a bit of the great Astigmatic. That comparison only really applies to the first and last tracks here however, as what falls in between is a bit more funky and soulful. The album starts off with something that may end up being added to my list of favorite jazz tunes ever, "Meteorologicly Inclined." If Madlib ever gets ahold of the track immediately following it, "Watch What Happens Now," some serious shit is gonna go down. The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to "Meteorologicly Inclined," but it is still a very solid listen. Hell, that opinion may even change fairly soon, as this record has been continuously growing on me since I first listened to it earlier in the week. First impressions are often correct, but time can make the heart grow fonder - or something like that... whatever.

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Jesse Somfay - A Catch in the Voice (Archipel, 2009)

2010-04-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

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Things fade in and out a lot on Jesse Somfay's A Catch in the Voice.

The Canadian producer's latest album is split across two discs, with the first containing ambient compositions and the second being more minimal techno-based. The title of one of the first disc's highlights, "Hypnogogii", stands as a pretty good representative of the territory we're in: the term appears to signify people occupying the "borderland state" between sleep and wakefulness, and by extension the surreal, quasi-hallucinatory imagery generated by the hypnagogic mind, a realm of rushing, humming sound and hyperreal patterns of colour and light (also reported by meditators, prisoners who spend extended periods in the dark, and partakers in hallucinogenic drugs). The music embodies its name: as gorgeous extended synth pads cocoon the edges, sporadic percussion lines weaves in and out of the middle, guiding the track, building to a head and then receding, morphing slowly as they go.

Indeed, much of the imagery here seems concerned with light and space, both inner and outer. A quick browse of the titles reveals the likes of "Good Morning Strange Light", "Folding Ghosts Into Origami Stars", "Borrealis", "Ex Astris, Ad Astra". "Amo Alucinor", from the second disc, translates roughly from Latin as "I love to daydream", the latter word being the root of the English "hallucinate". "Averroes" may well be a tribute to the 12th-century Muslim celestial philosopher of the same name. It's hard to say whether Somfay names these tracks after what the music suggests or conversely uses the titles as templates for the musical ideas, but either way, the two keep pace with one another as a coherent, otherworldly whole.

Some of the shorter tracks benefit from the added focus of constraint. "Folding Ghosts into Origami Stars", for example, layers subtle, buzzing, almost MBV-esque backdrops behind a pretty lead melody and comes off like the kind of atmospheric mini-epic Stars of the Lid do so well. "Brave Late Fade"'s bassy drone is occasionally joined by a choir seemingly heard from a distant dream. Some parts, like the start of "Cuckoo Spit", resemble the murky, primal noises you hear on the kind of medical albums doctors buy to learn the sounds of irregular heartbeats, or the woozy pulsing of an ultrasound scan. And "Irradian Irradiant"'s varispeed arpeggios occasionally even conjure up the unpleasant spectre of Rick Wakeman (not often, though, thankfully).

For my money, the ambient side is the better one, although in practice the two are not often fully separated (see: the beats on the first disc's "Good Morning Strange Light" or "Ex Astris, Ad Astra", the lush drumless flotation tank that is disc 2's "Averroes", or BoC-esque close "NotR"). "Scotia", all looming bassline and fractures of distant melody, and the almost trancey skitter of "Algonquin", are highlights of the second disc.

At nearly two hours total – five of the tracks exceed ten minutes, another three top nine minutes – A Catch in the Voice can perhaps be a little overwhelming to digest in one session. It's not intended as an insult to suggest that your concentration may sometimes also drift in and out of focus: for these field recordings from a land between sleep and wakefulness, there's nothing more appropriate.

Vinko Globokar - Hallo, Do You Hear Me? (Harmonia Mundi, 1994)

2010-04-14T12:33:00.000-07:00

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Continuing with our series of "What's So Great About Modernity?" is this wonderful collection of Vinko Globokar compositions. Those who are familiar with Globokar likely are thinking, "wait a minute here;" I ask these readers to indeed wait as I provide a snippet of Vinko's background. Mr. Globokar is both an accomplished trombonist, premiering works by many 20th century heavyweights, and a card carrying modernist -- working both with Stockhausen and at IRCAM in the 60's and 70's. But in addition to these composer credentials, Vinko founded the free improv group New Phonic Art (see comments section). Thus leading to the inclusion of Hallo, Do You Hear Me? in this "series." Herein Vinko synthesizes high modernity with aleatoric techniques, interspersing the composed with the improvised. These third-stream compositions are beyond modernity -- in that, unlike post-modernism, they are a progression past, not a counterpoint to, post-WWII composition. Maybe some would say post-post-modernism, but I reserve that word for mudslinging.

Comparisons? This compilation could easily have been released by Ambiances Magnétiques and/or have been of Paul Dolden's doing. Yet never does Globokar come off as academic as the aforementioned label, which, considering Globokar's academy roots, only adds to the utter surreality of this affair.

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Jacob ter Veldhuis - Heartbreakers (Emergo Classics, 2001)

2010-04-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

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If you’ve been wondering ‘so, besides Philip Glass & co. as well as the so-called ‘neoclassical’ bands, what’s out there that currently resists the tireless impulses of old modernism?’ here’s some music to help you answer the question. Its form: a postmodern mash-up of minimalism, melodic interventions, kitschy jazz, and voice samples in what Jacob ter Veldhuis has called ‘boombox works’. Because of them, the Dutch composer has been accused of anti-intellectualism and ‘musical terrorism’, among other charges that will certainly come to mind when facing this music. If punk had entirely come from an academy, this could’ve been its sound.

Ter Veldhuis, in this record, draws out pieces on a basis of voice loops from a wide variety of sources, from Gulf War reports or juvenile delinquency documentaries to the voice of Chet Baker. As the speech plays out and generates a certain type of timbre and rhythm, the instruments intervene with melodic passages, always fast-paced, always mirroring the form of the speech as confrontation or as pure company and adornment. The highlight of the album, “GRAB IT!” is the best example of the method, taxing the sax player enormously as the piece constantly demands him or her to keep up with the shouts of anger and the insults in the samples. The rest of the pieces mix this to varying effects, generating an interesting interplay between speech and instruments that most of the time feel like noisy exercises in pissing the ‘serious listener’ off.

And man, are they noisy! I had the fortune of experiencing the aforementioned piece live with a very skilled sax player, at a college festival that combined contemporary works with modern ones in a program that, at the very least, surprised me with its variety. So it was pretty fun and funny to have been assailed by this loud, out-of-control work almost immediately after a classical guitarist had set an initial mood with works by Ernst Krenek and Frank Martin. The rational razor of the modern had thrown the audience’s senses into deep introspection and had meticulously forged the almost mystical connection with the pre-constructed hyper present-tense when after a small break, still meditative, it was blown to pieces by high-volume sound equipment and the precise wails of alto sax.

The rest of the pieces in this album follow, more or less, a similar pattern, always giving speech a very important place among the production of sounds. They’re also inevitably loud, repetitive, and of a technical complexity that has appropriated the modernist language while having simultaneously kind of dumbed it down in an almost joking form of expression that seems to pursue no high ideal, throwing concepts and ideas around to see which ones stick (and if none do, it matters not). In this vein, I found an interesting text in the Quasar Sax Quartet webpage that I’d like to quote: “A controversial figure in certain circles, ter Veldhuis dares to stand up to what he calls the 'washed-out avant garde'. He strives to liberate new music from its isolation by employing a direct, at times provocative idiom that spurns 'the dissonant', in Ter Veldhuis' view a completely devalued means of musical expression.” Regardless of the status of our allegiance to the avant-garde, it’s at least commendable that the man expressly stands against it instead of trying to counter-follow its inheritance in some way (winking all the way to the concert hall) or altogether ignoring it.

One could argue that this enterprise could be done in a more perfected matter, but then again, if punk was the shock therapy popular music needed at the time and it was based upon non-skill, noise, killing history, and clear flaws, then the music of ter Veldhuis might not be too far off from its paradoxical purpose of bringing the avant-garde to the masses. After all, it was pretty amusing that a friend of mine, who attended that same festival and who has fairly conservative musical tastes, utterly disliked the Krenek and Martin pieces and then actually liked the ter Veldhuis one. The man could be onto something, I guess.

In the end, it’s not an album I particularly enjoy, like, or think as 'good' (perhaps my allegiance is still on the other side), but it might prove interesting to explore for you, our dear readers, while considering the few issues brought up in this post and the many others left out because of virtual space or sheer ignorance on my part. Listening to the first piece, at least, makes the exploration worth it. Enjoy (or not)!

Download.

Zeitkratzer - Old School: Cage and Tenney (Zeitkratzer, 2010)

2010-04-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

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When an ensemble dedicates itself to performing and recording the music of other composers it’s often tricky to balance the intentions of the composer with the musical identities of the performers. One hopes that they will realize the composer’s intentions to the fullest of their abilities but at the same time inject the music with new ideas or energy. That is to say, in an ideal performance the identities of the composer and performers are given the proper balance. This is essentially the definition of “interpretation” in notated Western music. A performance of a famous piece of music is always in danger of repeating the past or straying too far from the composer’s intentions, especially when playing music with any level of indeterminacy.

I first encountered the Arditti String Quartet’s massive discography of 20th century music as a teenager in music school and was instantly enamored. The Arditti Quartet are clearly one of the most skilled and important interpreters of modern chamber music but at a certain point the uniformity of their approach begins to overtake the music. Their virtuosity, commitment, and approach to most music is impeccable; however, when playing more subtle and restrained music like that of Feldman or Luigi Nono, their razor sharp accuracy and intensity can make the music seem “too Arditti”. Knowing this, I approached the first two installments of Zeitkratzer’s “Old School” recording series - each album is dedicated to a different famous composer of the late 20th century - with an exciting but also somewhat guarded interest.

Given that Zeitkratzer’s output over the past few years prominently features chamber ensemble re-workings of electronic and non-academic/non-Western music, it seems obvious that their new Old School series (dedicated to the most well-documented composers of the post-WWII avant-garde) is an attempt to breathe new life into music where the performance practice is already seemingly codified. Skilled, imaginative and vital interpreters that they are, suffice to say that Zeitkratzer is successful in this goal but the results can be a mixed bag.

The Cage disc includes three pieces from Cage’s final creative period, most commonly referred to as “the number pieces”. I have always loved the number pieces. With his final work Cage finally struck the perfect balance between indeterminacy and control, truly achieving his stated goal of both imitating nature and “letting the sounds be themselves”. That said, Zeitkratzer’s performances of “Four6” and “Five” sound a bit too much like Zeitkratzer for my taste. Allowing very little space for silence, these recordings showcase Zeitkratzer’s now familiar arresting intensity that achieves greatness in most situations but in the context of John Cage’s gentle, tender approach to sound seems forced into the Zeitkratzer ideology. The recording of “Hymnkus”, on the other hand, is astonishing; a surprisingly complex piece composed just a few years before Cage’s death, the piece proceeds intently but not too forcefully.

Perhaps because James Tenney’s music is not reliant on indeterminacy, the Tenney Old School disc fares much better. While still a well-known and respected composer, James Tenney’s exploration of several kinds of experimental music, and most notably his work with alternate tunings, has yet to receive the kind of affection and documentation that seems to benefit Cage and other well-known composers of the era. This disc is a welcome addition to the somewhat more limited availability of recordings of Tenney’s music, including one premiere recording (the stunning “Harmonium #2” from 1976) and new interpretations of two more well-known pieces. The disc concludes with one of Tenney’s most well-known pieces, the aptly titled arch piece, “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” which is finally given a definitive, masterful recording by percussionist Maurice de Martin. While the instrumentation of this single-note piece is left to the performer, the piece is most commonly performed on a large tam-tam because of the tam-tam’s endlessly rich timbre and breathtaking dynamic range (much credit is due here to the recording engineer - only on Michael Pisaro’s Hearing Metal has a tam-tam ever sounded so good). It’s a stunning, controlled performance that transcends both performer and instrument, and is the perfect end to what is the finest document of Tenney’s music I’ve heard on a single CD.

Toshio Hosokawa - Deep Silence / Gagaku

2010-03-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

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Well, originally slotted for this post was a collection of Mr. Hosokawa's string quartets to compliment that wonderful Nancarrow False Bread so kindly posted the other day. However, as the days have become longer and my shirt sleeves shorter, I have found it harder to tolerate this vitamin D deficient music -- thus, Deep Silence.

One word frequently comes up in descriptions of these compositions -- shimmering. And I agree, though the adjective need apply in two cases. First, as the sun peeks through the window pane while you are enjoying your first cup of coffee (or whatever caffeinated beverage you enjoy in the morning), its glare temporarily blinds you, obfuscating the screen of that laptop you were hiding behind. Ah yes, shimmering! On the other hand, when you become affixed to the dancing of the flames at the first bonfire of the season, whereupon the radiant colors against the dark of night haunts you for what seems like ages. Yup, that kind of shimmering as well!

Let me explain what this has to do with Mr. Hosokawa. Contained in this release from Wergo are seven compositions, three written by Toshio and four Gagaku (Japanese classical music). All seven are performed by Stefan Hussong on accordion and Mayumi Miyata on Shō (a bamboo mouth organ), with Hosokawa and Gagaku pieces alternating. Therein lies the shimmering bifurcation: as one might expect, the Gagaku pieces are dissonant yet still tonal (remember, tonality only just died a century ago), whereas Hosokawa's compositions are fiercely atonal. Even still, the theme remains constant throughout each piece; extended drones link the room-filling "shimmers" with deep silence. Because without orchestration, without performance, a composition is merely just annotated silence. And here, on Deep Silence, one can almost see the notes being carried from parchment to the aural plane.

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Erik Carlsson - Let's Fall in Love! (Bombax Bombax, 2009)

2010-03-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

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1) I'm just going to get this out of the way: You are not able to download this album here. Erstwhile is a distributor, and they don't take kindly to our types robbing them of a fistful of dollars (dollars they actually deserve, as opposed to say EMI). Also, this record came out just last year. Go buy it. It's worth it.

2) This post is my response to Taylor's Tatsuya Nakatani post, located just south of here. Like Green Report 12, Let's Fall in Love! is a solo percussion record. I hear one big difference between this and Green Report and that is this: Let's Fall in Love! is actually a good record. Whereas Nakatani is content to wander from instrument to instrument and noodle a bit at each one, Carlsson creates gorgeous (and occasionally frightening) textures out of a handful at a time, slowly developing a piece to feel like a well-rounded composition rather than an off-the-cuff improvisation (this record is improvised, mind you). "My Heart was Screaming Like a Cow" is one of my favorite solo percussion tracks ever, mostly for what appears to be the use of a snare drum to generate a sympathetic buzz juxtaposed to a bowed god-knows-what, creating the illusion of a distorted signal. That kind of trickery is something I truly swoon over, and it is my hope that some of you may find yourselves swooning over Let's Fall in Love! as well.

Fall in love.

Tatsuya Nakatani - Green Report 12 (H&H Production, 2004)

2010-03-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

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I was going to ask the readers to skip what follows and download Green Report 12 immediately, since I think it can be most effective without any prior knowledge of Nakatani. However, this premise will not work for two reasons: (i) an album in which Nakatani collaborated on was posted back in November (with Michel Doneda and Jack Wright) and (ii) plastered right on the cover is "solo percussion." So then I must presume some familiarity on the part of our readers with Nakatani, if only due to the connotations of a solo percussive album.

Before I proceed, I must mention that Tatsuya is currently on tour in the US and will be doing so for the next few months. I highly suggest everyone check him out if he's coming into your town. Through the artist link above you can find his complete schedule. If you happen to take a gander at his schedule, you will notice that there are some gaps in it, both in terms of where and with whom he will be playing. If you happen to reside in one of these areas and would like to see him and/or play with him, it is worth your time to contact Nakatani. When he came through where I live I was only able to stick around for his solo set, so I cannot speak of his improvisational interaction with others; however, what I saw was "rad as fuck."

That aside, some description of what Tatsuya actually does. In his set and, from what I can tell, on this album Nakatani employs a multitude of peculiar extended techniques -- scrapping "prepared" drums with cymbals, abusing singing bowls, and most prominently, bowing gongs -- all together producing sounds you would believe were not percussive unless you were told otherwise. Although all of his set was flabbergasting, the gong work was the truly mind mending tool in his repertoire. The technique works as such: Nakatani bows against the side of various large gongs, primarily toward the top (for better control, as far as I can tell), alternating both the speed and duration of his stroke in order to generate massive overtones, somewhat reminiscent of Robert Rutman's Steel Ensemble. Then, once one gong's reverberations blanket the room, he juxtaposes its sound with another's, whose tones are just enough dissimilar from the first's so that all the right kinds of dissonances challenge your ears. Time suspends and you begin to no longer just hear sound, you actually feel it.

So check this album out, and if it tickles your fancy, support this "master percussionist" (who has also played with nmperign and Nate Wooley, to name a few others) by attending a show of his in your hometown.

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Morton Feldman - Orchestral Works & Chamber Music (Col-Legno, 2000)

2010-03-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

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In order to further complete (y)our Feldman collection here at KiC, here's a little something that might, at the very least, grab your attention. Also, I'd like to share some thoughts with you regarding this album, maybe as a review, maybe just as a general "whatever" kind of text. Please take it with a grain of salt.

The first piece, just titled "Piano and Orchestra", constantly shifts in form and color like one of those abstract expressionist paintings he admired so much; while this is a bit far from action painting, it certainly resembles the process behind it. If one is to trace the origins of the "method", one could go back to Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros and his New York workshop at the end of the thirties, a location that attracted more than one future American star such as Jackson Pollock. This place of experiments in material aspects of the two-dimensional art brought forward an enormous force to the theoretical background of Pollock et al. As a 'venting' grounds for Siqueiros' heavily contrasting ideas about art in general (as much as a result of the "good neighbor" policy with Mexico), it's no wonder that a whole generation of painters and the musicians later associated with them share little bits of thought from the angry, outspoken, deeply militant Siqueiros. I'd like to argument that one of these ideas was that of a 'new classicism'. Siqueiros, like most good avant-gardists, wanted to eradicate the formal pressure of history upon art, but unlike most of those same good avant-gardists, he also wanted to create a 'new classicism'. He wasn't referring to pretty old neoclassicism as we know it, but a simpler, perhaps more utopian endeavor: the replacement of a tradition of repetition with a tradition of the now (almost of improvisation), self-renewing and self-rupturing.

Since this is intended to just be a brief text about the album, I'll stop there for you to interpret and research as you will, considering that yes, the idea is quite paradoxical, maybe philosophically vacuous, and has been a subject of a myriad discussions regarding the historical vanguard in general too. So, soldiering on with the argument and ignoring all sorts of holes, there is a Feldman quote within the liner notes in this album, in relation to "Rothko Chapel", that brought me to it all: "While it was possible with the paintings to reiterate color and scale and still retain dramatic interest, I felt that the music called for a series of highly contrasted merging sections. I envisioned an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek temples." Of course, it seems like an easy shot, but considering that the chapel itself is a kind of neo-spiritual monument informed by paintings that tried to lure the spectator into a 'fourth dimension' (deeper into space, deeper into time), the whole work seems imbibed with this idea of a new classic. Rothko and Feldman had found it: the spiritual experience absolutely never gets old, and proof abounds everywhere you look in human culture. By entering the fourth dimension, each prayer, each meditation, would be constantly renewed in states of mind unshackled from Enlightenment and furiously grasped upon perception, the mindlessly empiric, the perpetually changing. And yet, it would all be framed by monumentality, by death and the immobility of a classical frieze. The tradition of the now would be practically complete, with its minimal, almost silent, horizontal micro-revolutions represented both in painting and music. Action painting be damned, this would be truly transcendental for both the individual and the collective ("highly contrasted merging sections"). Like the ending of the piece, it would be utterly sublime.

"Durations II" is the other side of the coin: with only the pitches specified, the performer is practically required to do 'action playing' and keep the listener on the edge of his or her seat. Each recording, then, would be like each painting hung on the wall, a different experience out of the same work, a frame that is always self-renewing; not a 'style', but a sort of new form of tradition.

Here's the album for you to enjoy. I hope I piqued some of your interest; I did not intend to make a solid essay or review, and instead went along with my intuition to bring a flawed idea about a possible interpretation for you to consider when listening to these pieces. As for the recording itself, I think it's good enough. There's other versions out there that are more powerful and/or severe in their treatment of the music, but this one is fine and compiles three of Feldman's most evocative pieces. In any case, there you go:

Download.

Ensemble Pittoresque - For This Is Past (Clogsontronics, 1983)

2010-03-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

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Ensemble Pittoresque formed in 1977 when "The Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, Fripp & Eno, Pere Ubu and a wide variety of mainstream artists pounded the world with their personal pinnacles of artistic brilliance." Many see Ensemble Pittoresque as fore-bearers of "cold wave," whatever that is... And while it may be true that there would be no Cold Cave without Ensemble Pittoresque, I hear this more as a cross between Bowie's Low and This Heat, whatever that means...

Most songs follow a deceptively simple early synth-pop format, and do it incredibly well, but I'm not sure that I would be discussing this album at all if it weren't for "Auratorium." The first time I put on For This Is Past I was half-asleep and ready to call it a night when this track grabbed my attention and really threw me back into the music. I sat up wide-awake until the record was finished. "Auratorium" stands out from the rest of the record because although it may not be, its choral samples give it a much denser feel. Its forward thrust gives the song an almost proto-house feel. It's just exciting music, plain and simple. Elsewhere "Maitre Satori" uses classic "O Superman" vocoders to great effect. Every song here is a synth-pop classic. It's still available from their label's website, and I believe you get both the LP and CD when you order it, so you should feel even more inclined to pick up this fantastic record!

Fred Frith - Step Across the Border (RecRec, 1990)

2010-02-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

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What I offer to you, technically, is the soundtrack to the movie of the same title; however, "soundtrack" is a bit misleading. The film is a documentary of Fred Frith and his interactions with heavyweights of the late 80's avant-rock/improv scene (Tom Cora, John Zorn, and Arto Lindsay, to name a few). Again, "documentary" may not be the best word choice, for even the subtitle reads "A ninety minute celluloid improvisation by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel". That is, Step Across the Border was shot through the sporadic filming of band practices (mainly Skeleton Crew, I believe), live performances, accidental conversations, and impromptu improvisations. Thus resulting in a collage of (i) music at moments resembling Frith's solo work but mostly in the vein of his 80's colloborative efforts (especially Art Bears and the aforementioned Skeleton Crew), (ii) found urban sound, and (iii) musings on art, life, and politics. No better is this, and dare I say Frith himself, encapsulated with this final scene.

But again, what I provide below is the soundtrack. Please do add this film to your Netflix queue, if not for its merits as a film, but at least for the wondrous integration of sound and vision. There is a certain tenderness to some of the shots, in particular those with René Lussier, wherein the improvisations take on an extremely melodic form, almost defiantly composed, yet obviously spontaneous. The only further musing I have is on the track 'Morning Song': I cannot shake the feeling that, with the use of the alarm as a rhythmic element, this track is a nod to Derek Bailey.

Note: Both this album and a DVD copy of the film can be purchased at the label link provided at the top of the post.

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United Bible Studies - Huntly Town (Slow Loris, 2004)

2010-02-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

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As much as you try to deny it, we as human are so impacted by the weather: we choose where we live based on it, we choose what we do based on it, and finally, we choose to what we listen. As much as I love Radulescu, his string quartets just do not sit well with me on a sunny and sixty Saturday morning. So when I went around today saying, "How about that weather on Sunday, am I right?" intimately connected with that sentiment is fond remembrances of lazing in the grass listening to Huntly Town, ignoring any and all responsibilities. The melodies are simple, the guitar work seldom exceeds stock folk, but the atmosphere is undeniable; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This Dublin group demands days drenched in vitamin D, and brisk, sweater nights. Let United Bible Studies proselytize the good book of springtime.

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Half-Pair of Trios - Not for the Faint of Dick (Self-released, 2010)

2010-01-30T13:12:00.000-08:00

Here we have the most fully-realized work of music this decade (though very young) has yet to see. This master-stroke of an album was apparently in the works for over a year before the three brave intellectuals who produced it finally landed on a take they found perfect enough to release. The 45 minute composition (recorded completely live with no overdubs) "Hey Jude" contains all the best elements of EAI, spectral composition, and PB&J, thus introducing a completely new immaculate genre: IEA (Industrial Elephant Anthems). Detractors have noted the uncanny similarities to Wagner's Ring Cycle, though anyone who truly dissects this music will find that Wagner is obviously inferior. Instead Not for the Faint of Dick is the kind of logical progression from Vampire Weekend's debut that Contra failed to be. Download it now, and you probably won't be disappointed.

Download.

Nate Wooley - Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller (Creative Sources Recordings, 2005)

2010-01-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

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Errata: As revealed in the comments section by none other than KiC reader Nate Wooley, no editing or post-production went into this recording; Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller was completed all in one sitting. My confusion arose from the dating, which is explained within the comments section for the interested. Even though this invalidates a portion of my analysis, my praise for this album is steadfast, nor do I think Wrong Shape to be any less unique.

Many thanks to Nate for both reading this blog and correcting my error; I am very much so sorry for my false assumptions. Since in my review I stressed Nate's supposed transparency, I leave below my original post unedited. I do hope others enjoy the irony surrounding this post as much as I did -- so much so that it warmed my otherwise frigid bike ride.

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Compared to his lowercase brethren, and even with consistently glowing reviews, Nate Wooley has received little to no attention from RYM free improv enthusiasts. So with Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller, recorded in August 2004, I attempt to rectify this glaring omission.

As a member of the trio that released Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing, KiC readers ought to be familiar with his name, if not also his playing style. Although Wooley's work with Lonberg-Holm and Roebke is exemplary (and one of my favorites from 2009), his group approach, as it should, greatly differs from his solo style. An aside: I suggest those interested in group improvisation to check out an interview with Nate over at bagatellen. In this interview he describes the way in which he listens to his band mates, focusing on "cycles".

Indeed comparisons to the likes of Greg Kelley and Axel Dörner are apt, but at the same time incredibly reductionist. Yes, these three trumpeters heavily employ extended techniques, but those casual words -- "similar to" -- betray both the feeling and the creative process that goes into each of these artist's improvisations.

Throughout Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller I hear flashes of resemblance -- the timbrel fluttering around the tenth minute could easily be an excerpt in Kelley's Self-Hate Index -- but delightful quirks destroy the homogeneity hypothesis. For instance, around the fifteen minute mark, a field recording of (what seems to be) a BBC television report on the 2004 Presidential election can be heard. In this sample, the reporter makes reference to the "final hours" of campaigning. With this time-stamp, Wooley wears post-production on his sleeve (or at least stitched prominently on his jeans), giving the listener a welcomed moment of transparency. Silence, as well, is employed prominently in this fifty-odd minute piece, via Wooley's deft navigation between nearly inaudible hiss, font-size six licks, and overbearing feedback.

As a whole -- a precaution to the meek, this album is only one track -- through this unusual narrative, Nate Wooley provides not only a snapshot of lowercase technique, but also a glance at his distorted voice.

Joe McPhee Po Music - Topology (Hat Hut Records, 1981)

2010-01-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

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Topology is a swath of mathematics that investigates the properties preserved under a continuous transformation. Originating from an in depth study of the real line, this field equips the analyst with the ability to abstract beyond the familiar, in addition to generating a convenient link between analysis and the other major fields of mathematics -- algebra and geometry.

The most commonly used tool of a topologist is a homeomorphism. Essentially defining topological equivalence, two spaces are said to be homeomorphic if one can be deformed into the other in a well-behaved manner. As such, topology is frequently called "rubber sheet geometry". For instance, in jest, a topologist is said to not know the difference between a donut and a coffee mug. Put as simply as possible, topologies allow mathematicians to "stretch", "cut", and "glue" abstract spaces

The applications for this field are countless outside of pure mathematics, and in titling this album so, Joe McPhee supplies an interesting and unforeseen context to examine his music. I had grown accustom to thinking of jazz as a means of expression, with free jazz and its sub-genres as the liberal extension. From the spiritual revelry of Pharoah Sanders to the existential musings of Sachiko M, I had been caught up in this tautology. However, through this Po Music, I was able to break free and view each passage as a deformation of another. The free improvisation of "Age" blends seamlessly into the reinterpretation of older styles of "Blues for new Chicago". Before the listener can grasp what has occurred, all structure is cut away in the titular final track, through Radu Malfatti's electro-acoustic explorations.

In many ways, this topological framework is useful to understand the traditional role of an improviser. They extract motifs from their conscious, then instantaneously stitch them back together. Although Topology is said to be a non-idiomatic session, the interpretation is similar. And this fantastic cast (the aforementioned Malfatti and McPhee, Irène Schweizer, and others) do not disappoint.

Sorry for the stodgy math!

Download.

Xu Cheng - Wild Fox Chants (Archival, 2009)

2009-12-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

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Xu Cheng's Wild Fox Chants was brought to my attention by Danny's wonderful, but dormant, blog 'By Chance Upon Waking.' A couple things made me excited: first, logistically, it was free for download. I had not heard of Cheng, and I might not have been willing to shell out $20 for a disc of "prepared guitar" by an artist I hadn't heard of. By putting it out free on Archival, Cheng really sucked me in and made me a fan.

The second thing that got me interested was, of course, the "prepared guitar." Whenever I read "prepared" to describe an instrument, my mind naturally recalls John Cage's prepared piano pieces, and although the instruments are quite different, I think a familiarity with Cage's works could be a partial introduction to this. There are scrapes of the strings, tightened and loosened string, plucked more than struck. Indeed, large passages seem to center directly around various textured metals striking the strings as the tuning pegs loosen, then tighten, creating a tone variation that is both familiar and unique (in timing).

It should be said that this is not quite eai or microtonal, although a Keith Rowe fan might find something here to like. This, like most genres that require (instead of recommend) close listening, goes to great lengths to focus the listener on both newer compositional methods (variable timing, odd repetitions, atonal playing that highlights the percussive qualities of the instrument), and on the physical properties of the instrument (the sound of the bridge, the uses of the tuning pegs, the electronics in the pickups). In this way, the artist can heighten the listener's awareness of the inherent properties of the guitar, and work to dissolve the notions of "intuitive" playing. In short, it is not the intuitive way to pick up a guitar and play open chords. Rather, the intuitive way to play a guitar is to bat at it, twist its knobs, and shake it to effect reverberation.

Download.

Kaija Saariaho - L'Amour de Loin (Deutsche Grammophon, 2005)

2009-12-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

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Composed in 1999 and premiered in 2000, L'Amour de Loin is Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's first opera. As a reinterpretation of Jaufré Rudel's La vida breve, Saariaho, along with librettist Amin Maalouf, tells a story of idealized love from afar. Set in the 12th century, through five acts, a jaded Parisian falls in love with a woman from Tripoli, whom he has never met. The male lead, Jaufré, travels to Tripoli to meet his distant lover, Clémence, but falls ill during the voyage. Upon arriving in the modern day Libya, Jaufré perishes in his lovers arms.

Although Saariaho fits nicely alongside the contemporary composition that litters this domain, L'Amour may not be the best introduction to Saariaho's work. In fact, I cast aside this piece on first listen earlier this year, finally revisiting it after having heard her Chamber Music and at Alex Ross' bequest. Kaija, having studied at IRCAM, should be of interest to Les espaces acoustiques adorers; however, to the best of my knowledge, Saariaho does not employ spectral techniques in L'Amour, nor in any of her other works.

At the time of this composition, both Saariaho and Maalouf -- a Lebanese also living in Paris -- were expatriates; most certainly, the two's experience with voluntary exile helped to warp this meditation on international obsession. I am still a recent convert to opera, but I can confidently say that L'Amour is a work that demands to be heard -- many commentators described it as a 21st century Tristan and Isolde.

Before I call it a day, some housekeeping. The release I have been describing is a performance at the Finnish National Opera. The label link directs you to Deutsche Grammophon's DVD release. Additionally, below, I have included a link to the audio from this DVD, for which I cannot find an official release.

Download.

Limpe Fuchs - Via (Dom, 1987)

2009-12-27T22:19:00.000-08:00

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As sometimes happens, after I finished the upload I found out, while searching for the above links, that Mutant Sounds has already posted this record. However, if you listen to the record, you'll see that it generally fits with this site, and I know that some of you don't like Rapidshare, so I kept the post.

This post fits nicely with the Jocy and Hallett posts from earlier, ie. female vocals, sure, but vocals mixed with a wide array of sounds, presented in pieces that span several genres. The first track, for instance, gives off a sort of Nico vibe, with wavering vocals, almost ritualistic, layered on top of fluttering pulses and random noises and clicks. "Lines" follows, and has a distinctly early electronics feel, arpeggios flash back and forth like Christmas lights on a string, tempting you to screw up your perception by predicting or skipping ahead. These electronics (perhaps a manipulated synth?) resurface against a meandering violin in "Play," a track devoid of vocals for long stretches.

The last three tracks are a little more "out," seemingly focusing on the vocal manipulations we've seen from Meredith Monk, Ratkje, and several others on the blog, with these vocals more improvised against a varied backdrop of clicks and small instruments. I haven't heard anything after this by Fuchs, but apparently she is still very active. Her site link above is basically her CV, and the Mutant Sounds link provides a good overview of things she has done since this.

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As for the site, I am going to continue to revise entries as I can. I realized over the weekend that many people link to this site on their own blogs and sites. Additionally, many artists have used the blurbs I've typed up for their own sites. Since this site is about the musicians, and since I really appreciate their work, I want to give those artists better quality. Therefore, I am going to try to improve the posts that I know for certain have been used by artists on their own sites.

Likewise, if you link to KiC on your blog or site, I want you to use this comment box to give me a link to your blog or site so I can reciprocate. When I redid the template for this site, I lost my link box. I did not want to take it down, but I screwed up. Please help me to regenerate it!

Download.

Miguel Angel Coria - En rouge et noir (Cramps, 1976)

2009-12-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

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We've interrupted this regularly scheduled broadcast for a re-blog from the fantastic and unjustly esoteric Twice Zonked!.

With releases from, among others, Cage, Bailey, Lucier, and Ashley, I suppose it is easy for Coria's breathtaking solo prepared piano work, En rouge et noir, to get lost among the Cramps shuffle. In addition to a continuous, approximately twenty minute long rendition, this release is also broken down into twelve discrete vignettes.

Coria violently commences in Materiali A, where the piano "almost sounds as though a rake head was laid inside." This approach, carried over through a few parts, resembles Derek Bailey at his most aggressive. As the Materiali progress from A to N, Coria's playing dissipates into sparser territory, with seemingly electro-acoustic elements in the middle sections. By happenstance, in my most recent playing, Martin Siewert & Martin Brandlmayr's Too Beautiful to Burn succeeded En rouge et noir. Siewert and Brandlmayr's first track, "Form", provided an excellent counterpoint, resembling Coria in sound, but obviously not in execution.

Although this LP was initially released in 1976 by Cramps, it has since been re-released by the aforementioned label in 2004, then by Strange Days in 2007 -- both in CD format. Seeing as neither label's site is in English, I feel it safe to provide a download link, from what I believe to be the 2004 issue. However, I linked to Strange Days, in hopes that our Japanese readers can find an in-print copy.

Download.

Aleph Naught - The Dreams In The Witch-House (Small Doses, 2009)

2009-12-16T08:13:00.001-08:00

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This was limited to 66 copies, which the label page is showing are sold out. Given Aleph Naught has put out a couple free things online, I think it should be safe to pass this along. I was listening to this record, and looking stuff up on it when I learned that Anthony Mangicapra did the artwork for this. I met Anthony recently, and he was a great guy, really cool to talk with about music. I need to get around to reviewing his music, too. For the time being, I'll cover this album, which is an EP, to be more precise.

Some might call this dark ambient, and I see the dark aspect to it, but there is really no comparison to Lustmord or anything like that. This is more heavy, undulating synth drone, with the volume pushing beyond the canvass in redlining pulses, streaks of melody paradoxically high pitched, but pressed low in the mix. The feeling is that of attending a rehearsal of five minutes of Gubaidulina and sustaining blunt force trauma to the ear. The volume distorts the sound, the textures flatten and stretch, all the while pushed by a persistent, increasing melody below.

For the record, I don't like when distortion is used to sort of "cover things up," so to speak. I really enjoy the sound of static and distortion, obviously, but unless there is more, or unless it is fantastic distortion, it sort of makes the music anonymous or cheap. The flip side, with a few records I've posted, and this, is when it comes out natural, or measured, or fits with the piece (or whatever), it really can add something, both aesthetically, and intellectually. I think the things that I take the most from this is the static is a sort of framing mechanism for the core melody that I mentioned. It sort of encapsulates a central melody within a ring of static. That is, the sound distorts at certain volumes, and if you think about your speaker array as being able to organize air for a certain distance, that distance from your speaker, its outer reaches, is the frame. Here, the volume distorts at a certain level, and is at the forefront of the music, thus the outer border I'm talking about.

Very cool, short, and although not revolutionary, expertly executed.

Download.

Noveller - Red Rainbows (No Fun Productions, 2009)

2009-12-12T21:44:00.001-08:00

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I'm making this entry to memorialize Sarah Lipstate's Noveller as the first entry of the new below section highlighting exceptional new releases. Like I said in the initial review, this section is going to highlight new releases, but not offer them for sharing (keeping with the loose policy of not posting anything in print, or less than 18 months old). When I get a new live review up (you should see the most recent review on the side bar), I will do the same for the live shows. Also, all download links from 2008 are removed. Some will be replaced following re-writes. I will link to those as they surface.

This is a very cool record, in part because it takes some of her partners/acolytes, and gives it a more emotional thrust. If you're into Rhys Chatham, or Glenn Branca, you'll find just as much to like as would any fan of looped, ambient swirls derived from layered picking and plucks. KILLED in CARS has posted a great deal of albums focusing solely on the piano, but slowly there has been a build of guitar-centered albums. As a guitar player myself, I am always on the lookout for records that are "guitar records" but are anything but simple fingerpicking or shredding exercises. Lipstate creates a beautiful record from very few elements, but don't let the scarcity of components throw you off: I considered this one of the most accomplished No Fun releases in large part because of the variety here. Lipstate captures that initial rush of creativity some feel when they get a new pedal, or stumble upon some of the more precious sounds a guitar can make. Alternately, she is unafraid to tune into some of the more menacing aspects of the guitar, the scraping noises it can make, its internal growl and hostility.

Please, by all means, visit her artist page, and try to catch her live. She is really putting out good stuff. I am so sad that I missed her show earlier this year at the Kitchen, but given the consistent quality of what's done there, and from the photos, I can safely say that Lipstate is taking full advantage of the artistic community in New York by working dance pieces, and exploring a host of the sounds that seem to pour out from all of the decaying brick boxes and smokey late night haunts this city has.

István Mártha - The Wind Rises [Hangnapló] (ReR, 1987)

2009-12-01T17:40:00.000-08:00

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An album that I found for a couple reasons: both on the Adore the Freak list, and the atonelectric peripherals list Doc threw together, as well as general acclaim (despite the criminally low rating count). Birthed by strong musicians in play, the affair was pushed into a higher level by the decision to play/record outside. There are several ways to try to get out of your "habit energy" (a goal a lot of mid-20th century composers longed to achieve): play an instrument you're not familiar with, play with other musicians that you don't know, work in new genres, and aside from those, others get less at the musician-instrument or composition aspects of making music, and more at the mindset of the musicians. This is one of them. By simply going outside, the moods of the musicians seem to have changed, the nature of the recording took on the warmth of field recordings (actually, it sort of is a field recording, blurring the lines of what that actually means). For everyone trying to hide in the forest and still put out tapes, take note: knowing your jazz can mean all the difference.

Download.

Tom Cora - Gumption in Limbo (Sound Aspects, 1991)

2009-11-27T12:31:00.000-08:00

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I am going to review this in due time. I am going through a phase of cleaning up the site some, primarily working on the layout and getting the tagging more clear. Sometimes this will lead to less precise tagging, but I think the overall look of the site will benefit.

Also, I am starting to put a little more into the posts. You can see below that I intend to link directly to the artist's page, the label, and also link to common resources that I use (last.fm, discogs, and RYM). This way, you can check out the record, then communicate with the artist, purchase from the label, and communicate with other people in our KiC community about it.

I definitely am still looking for input on the site, so you can use the comments here, or use the last.fm group page.

Download.

Wooden Veil - Wooden Veil (Dekorder, 2009)

2009-11-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

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Re-blogging this one, which is slowly building momentum at just the right time of the year. Just like the previous post, this one encompasses a whole host of styles, but does so with less amplification than you'd think. Ranging from the freest of free folk to near post-rock gestures, there is so much to like on this. In fact, it would be good to keep in mind while listening that the group puts a good deal into performances, going so far as to refer to some of them as installations. A good deal of music doesn't require this, and this album doesn't, either, but that little bit of insight does add something.

Download.

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth - The Main Ingredient (Elektra, 1994)

2009-11-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

Hip-hop. It's a noticeably touchy subject for extreme music geeks. Hip-hop heads tend to exist separately from your typical KiC-affiliated music obsessive. The only reason I can think of is the tendency for MCs to focus on the superficial. Bragging about how dope you are, or how much money you have, or how fucked up it is in dilapidated inner-city America, or being casually misogynistic isn't something our typically introverted heads have an easy time relating to. I'm not going to sit in my comfortable home, listening to Brotzmann or something similar and think, "I'm the shit."

Maybe that's why for me, the MC is secondary to the producer. My first concern is the quality of the beats and music. That said, it's definitely going to take away from the music if the MC is "whack." That's why Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth are perfect. Pete Rock, along with Madlib, Dilla, and Primo, is one of my absolute favorite producers. Speaking of Dilla (creator of the masterpiece Donuts, my most recent 5-star rating on RYM), Pete Rock was his idol. Apparently Pete Rock showed up during the recording of Fantastic Vol. 2 (by Slum Village, Dilla's original Detroit group) and Dilla had this spinning at the time. He told Pete this about when he was starting out: "I was trying to be you."

C.L. is nearly as great. He makes rapping sound easy. I guess that's why they call him Smooth. His flow is so effortless, it's insane. The closest comparison I can think of is Nas. It's clear that these two were made for each other, the chemistry is that good. Gang Starr has something similar going on, but Guru just isn't on the level that C.L. is.

In terms of production, The Main Ingredient builds on the soulful, jazzy sound of their classic debut, Mecca & The Soul Brother. The sound this time around feels more inspired by Tribe's Midnight Marauders, which came out the year before. It definitely pushes that sound forward. In fact, the first voice you hear on the record is a sample of Q-Tip from one of the first tracks on Midnight Marauders declaring "Pete Rock is in the House." That's part of what I love about hip-hop, when there is a definite inspiration being taken from a specific source, it feels more like a respectful give-and-take than a rip-off (which is especially impressive seeing as when you get down to it, sampling is the most direct no-bullshit way to rip something off). There is such an incredible exchange of ideas and mutual respect among hip-hop artists (it's such a shame that white media only recognizes the "beefs"). In the early nineties this was the reason the genre seemed to be excelling so rapidly. I don't know what happened. That collective-mind seems to have been broken, and now the innovators seem like anomalies. Though it lacks a classic on the level of "T.R.O.Y." The Main Ingredient is overall of a more consistent quality, and I find that much more impressive than a patchy record with a handful of classics on it.

Download

Hildegard Westerkamp - Into India (2002)

2009-11-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that I am currently working weird hours. Sometimes I have one or two weeks off, and then the next time I work, I am putting in 80 hours or more. Well, I can listen to music while I work, so between that and the commute, you now have a better understanding of my listening volume (amount, not loudness for those of you that are jackoffs). When I start to reach the point of exhaustion, I take little trips. Nothing is more powerful than a cohesive field recording, based entirely around either a place or an idea, to break up monotony and keep my imagination in shape. The recording in question here is of India, clearly, and it is of the type that retains a heavy amount of the source material untreated. However, the contexts are what you should pay attention to here. Transitions, juxtapositions, all the little things that mark a true craftsman (or woman) in this genre are present. I found myself yearning to drop what I was doing and spend even a day in India, just as I longed to fly around the world upon seeing the film 'Baraka.' For you haters, let go for a moment and listen to this without thinking about anything else, or reading, or anything.

EAQuartett - Electroacoustiquartett (2007)

2009-11-14T19:36:00.000-08:00

One of many albums that I have grown to love and would not have heard if not for the semi-dormant Danny. I think the name gives away what type of music this is, although I think that this is every bit as much a microtonal, maybe even a small jazz album, as it is an electroacoutic one. Indeed, if you go back to some of the other microtonal albums I've put up, I think you'll see much more in common here than there is with eai (as far as the typical conventions of an eai record). I will be updating most of these posts, but at least for now you have somewhere to start from.

Fly Pan Am - N'écoutez pas (Constellation, 2004)

2009-11-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

Autant Zig-Zag FTW. This track, and this album, inspired me to change course in 2004, and sent me into much deeper waters. Start at this track to get a feel for the record, but listen to the whole thing in awe. When I first heard this, way back in my days when I had a hundred or so followers on my journals on last.fm, I said that this is what I liked about post-rock. This comment diverted into a discussion about the genre. I think the intervening years have solidified the post-'Infinity' GY!BE sound (and Mogwai, actually) as what people think when they hear the term "post-rock." For the record, "experimental rock" could be a genre, albeit a completely vague and ineffectual one. I like to refer to these bands as post-rock because of their lineage (the GY!BE connections), the location (hotbed for the music), the label, and also because I think the idea behind the term post-rock should be what you think of when you use it. Before it solidified as it has, it generally could mean anything, from the musique concrete and French rock here, to jazzy Tortoise, to an instrumental band clashing against ambient music. In short, it was whatever stuff you grew to like out of your initial, more conventional, rock instrumentation. Nothing more or less. I stand by that, and maybe that little bit will guide your listening.

Et Sans - Par noussss touss les trous de vos crânes! (Alien8, 2005)

2009-11-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

Like the Fly Pan Am post, I came to this under the guise of post-rock. Back then, I thought Alien8 was exceptional (they're still cool, but not as good, imo), and so, when I was just a review writer trying to figure out what I would say about music, and how I would say it, I asked for this record. I am so glad I did. Read the above for a more detailed note on what I was thinking back then re: post-rock, but needless to say, this has nothing to do with (stylistically, anyway), GY!BE. This is weird electronic, krautrock mixed with noise and electronics. Really far out, and abrasive in all the ways you'll probably like. Again, genres are a waste of time, and I have been super busy, so I've neglected these posts. I think the ideas that went into the music are important. The methods are probably most important. Think to a time before genres were settled. Those musics were the result of reaction to and experimentation with established musics. Sometimes the simplest thing to do was blend styles. Think of this as style blending swagger from up your butt.

Parenthetical Girls - Safe As Houses (Oedipus, 2006)

2009-11-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

Back in my last.fm days, I wrote a long, detailed piece about this album, specifically its lyrics. Clearly, from the music on this blog, you don't see too many albums about lyrics, and I generally ignore them. Instead of re-inventing the wheel and re-reviewing this, and to spare my buddies on here a simple copy and paste, I want to encourage you, as always, to simply listen to the album, and instead of getting caught up in the indie signposts, you should think about the level of cohesion here. The album shifts moods, changes angles of observation, all around small, yet profound relationships - normally mother and child, and how each react to the loss or death waiting for their opposite. Gripping listen, and not a put on. I don't like their follow up, but this seems sincere, and if you start to sense the sincerity, go directly to 'Survived...' to be heartbroken. I still get chills on that track.

Factums - Alien Native (Siltbreeze, 2007)

2009-10-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is one of those albums that I like, but don't love, yet I always find myself throwing it on at least once every couple months. Personally, I have started to get back into bands that use more conventional instrumentation to do odd things. The reason why I tend to avoid that type of thing is because I think the potential for that approach to yield something new is limited, and also, because at this point there are countless records that focus on extended techniques, or intuitive playing, or are genre pieces and or highly idiomatic, and as such, where is there to go? I think that Factums do have familiar sounds to an extent, but the interesting thing about this music is it is quite removed from anything that I see live in NYC. I just can't imagine this in concert. Danny had stated Factums were the "new Residents" at one point, and I can see where he is coming from there. I suppose this music would benefit greatly from a crazy mythos or stage show like the Residents have.

Earle Brown - Tracer (Mode, 2007)

2009-10-30T20:37:00.001-07:00

Another avant-classical release on KiC (see that genre tagging is back, so you can click here or at the side bar). Brown is pretty well known, and I don't want to redo something you could just Google or look up on Wiki, so I should say that I posted this to continue the series, and give you a lot of the pieces that are floating around for Brown. This is pulled from a surround sound DVD, if I'm not mistaken, and is impeccably recorded and produced. From Doc's subsequent review on his RYM page, this is a good overview of the composer, and should set you about finding more of his stuff. I'm sure, for instance, there is a release of his 'Systems' on Tzadik from the last year or two.

Sun City Girls - Carnival Folklore Resurrection Radio (Carnival Folklore Resurrection 11 & 12) (Abduction, 2004)

2009-10-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

I fell in love with this as I was falling asleep. Most nights I look forward to when I am going to bed because it will no longer be weird for me to sit in a state of sensory deprivation (save for my ears of course). I have given myself ringing in my ears rather terribly, so to fall asleep, I listen to music at night. Long ago I realized this is when my mind is most open, with no distractions, and my analytical faculties reverted to an instinctual, rather than music-nerd intellectual, state.

Music like this is meant for those with imaginations. It has its own ideas of what it is, insofar as when its creators listen to it, I'm sure they have their own ideas about what it means, and what it should do. However, I get the sense that, as with most SCG and Sublime Frequencies material, the creators have no expectation of what the listener should get out of it. To be sure, there is a direction in the music, and perhaps SCGs are trying to tell us something, but I doubt that they're doing much more than passing along wonderful snippets, placing them side by side, and letting us draw our own conclusions. Much of the music here is on the conventional side of music, a sort of alienated look into the goings on of the other. This is actually great. What should I do, looking onto someone else's limited understanding, stacking my limited understanding of the creators here on top of their own limited understanding of the sources they document? Perhaps it is not about understanding, but a directive to viscerally experience the surface, and to wonder.

Ricardo Villalobos - Thé au Harem d'Archimède (Perlon, 2004)

2009-10-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

I've been working on putting a little something together for each of the posts I've made in the last month or so. Obviously Villalobos is one of the better known artists that I've posted, but I'm not so sure that KiC is the hangout for many of his fans. I think the jet-setting image, and the popularity has him lumped in with some of the cheesier dance/techno names that are more or less household names by now. This couldn't be further from the truth. Villalobos produces some of the most mesmerizing music in this vein.

Back when this came out, I was very much into micro house, yet, once I heard this, I was mostly done with the genre. I have yet to hear something so strongly conceived in the genre as this album. There are small melodies working, tiny percussion slowly changing, and multiple layers that interchange and mix, moving from the fore to the background. This is not robotic by any stretch. What seems repetitive from afar is lively, mutating, and full of surprises when listened to closely. Villalobos' talent is in part his keen ear for sounds (there is perhaps no greater audiophile), and his love of music. If you ask him what goes into his tracks, you'll hear a wide variety of genres.

For those of you that don't get caught up in whether or not something sounds dated, this record might provide you a new artist and sound to follow. Yes, amidst all the repetitive copy cats there are artists as vital as any in improv or whatever that have a strong feel for drum machines and tiny sounds.

Jac Berrocal - La nuit est au courant (In Situ, 1991)

2009-10-21T21:36:00.001-07:00

Slowly, ever since we posted our first In Situ release, I have been trawling through their catalog, finding lovely bits of electro-improvisation and straight out improv. This is a modest release, but still one that should be enjoyable to you. Here we have a nice electro trumpet workout not dissimilar to Toshinori Kondo (of solo and Peter Brotzmann partnership fame). Whenever I think about electronically manipulated trumpet, and I think about 1991, I start to think about the last days of Miles Davis, and how it all could have been so different. Miles, pre-retirement, was an expanding star, unstable, uneven in output, but amazing in his brilliance when he hit. I think of albums like this (and perhaps later Tolliver stuff) as what Miles might have done had he been able to keep his muse in check longer. Certainly the lyricism and compositions are Berrocal's own, but there are enough similarities to recommend this to any electro-trumpet fan.

Artificial Memory Trace - Vol. 5: Th Ality Absfract (1996)

2009-10-13T15:25:00.001-07:00

This is one of the albums that bubbles up on RYM, I don't know how, and gets passed around, and, though seemingly enjoyed by all, fades away. This post is designed to help avoid that fate. A couple things stand out - the obscurity of the group, and the date this was produced. When I first listened to this, I checked the accuracy of the release date, as this is something that could come out today and nobody would think a thing of it being dated or what not.

I have this marked as drone, and there are those elements quite often, but this is one of those affairs that also has surface recordings that could either be field recording, or microtonal, or depending on the source, musique concrete. It is not noise, but noise as a genre generally encompasses these sort of things. Just to give you an idea of what is on here, not to get caught up in debates about genre. The most important thing to know about this is that it is of high quality, and, due to its chronological placement, worth further investigation.

Francisco Guerrero - Zayin (1999)

2009-10-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

I don't intend to write much on this album. I should say that the KiC exposure for the other Guerrero post on here has gotten that album into the top 3 overall in its release year. I have yet to see this march up the charts, but sometimes it takes time. Clearly, the Arditti String Quartet is a unmistakable sign of quality, and if the composer doesn't seal the deal, then maybe you clicked the wrong Google link. In terms of relative quality, I like both albums we've posted for Guerrero, but I think that smaller string pairings are currently cooler than symphonies, so if that is your take, this is better. Other than that, I think the compositions are a little more aggressive and cohesive. Can't really go wrong, actually.

Biosphere - Dropsonde (Touch, 2005)

2009-10-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Mixture of a few things. The drone/noise on this is exceptional, characterized by bright shoots through grainy noise. I like that each textural difference has its own behavior. Adding compositional character to texture is something not all artists in this vein can accomplish. Also, there are decent percussive parts on here, although I think those things do sound dated. While I normally don't care about that kind of thing, when it comes to this particular genre, even great albums, with these elements, are caught in the undertow of common sounds and generic copying. Thankfully, the majority of this album is really strong, and, as you can see from the comments, very likable.

Alexander Mossolov - Russian Futurism, Volume I - Piano Works (Arte Nova, 1990)

2009-09-27T13:51:00.001-07:00

More piano works, given to me by a very cool RYM friend. If I recall (this was a while ago), this Russian Futurism thing (highly knowledgeable post coming, lol) produced several composers and a host of work, but only a couple are well known today. The description of this work (and indeed this series) states the goal is to bring to light more composers from the era, and reveal (not that music lovers ever doubted the power of Russian creativity) the brilliant musical impetus of the times. While these pieces are not totally bizarre or atonal, there are highly contemporary moments in here, and a touch of reserved seriousness is present to scratch that peculiar Russian itch you might have.

Bitter Funeral Beer Band - Live in Frankfurt 82 (Country and Eastern, 2007)

2009-09-21T19:36:00.001-07:00

Don Cherry is one of my all-time faves, and I've posted a few of his things on here before. The thing is, apart from a few moments, I don't hear him too much. This is definitely the sort of thing that he would be involved with, but this is not so much a vehicle for his playing, but an example of the type of thing he wanted to surround himself with. I always felt that, setting aside his eccentricities, especially later in his career, Cherry was the anti-jazzbo trumpeter. While people say his technique was wanting here and there (I'm not proficient on the instrument, so I'm not sure I can verify this), his imagination, his way of making phrases and tones fit in with what the group was doing, was unquestioned. I think for Cherry, instead of learning the idiom perfectly (as Miles did, before he started his own stylistic expansion), he wanted to blend what he could do with things that he enjoyed, almost from the outset.

Cherry's "world" recordings, basically easily dated as 70s mixtures with rhythms and wind instruments immediately recognized vaguely as music from outside the Western tradition, have a life of their own, and still are exciting listens today. However, this one is peculiar because he is a side man, and from what I can tell, his pairing here is with European fellow travelers, equally interested in looking outside their national border. The result is not dissimilar to the type of sputtering post rock rhythms you might here from this or that collective in the 90s, with a touch of 70s and jazz material, of course (this in from the 80s, but you get the point).

Anyway, there are much better reviews of this, but hopefully you can get out of it what I do, a fledgling attempt, one I rarely hear anywhere until much later (again, some of the directions rock based acts would go to when reaching for jazz, resulting in a few strains of post-rock), and the enthusiasm. Beautiful record.

Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily - Flying Low (2004)

2009-09-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

Incredibly satisfying instrumental avant-folk. Very listenable. Had Cerberus Shoal started to worry that they no longer sounded "post-rock" after the release of The Land We All Believe In, this might be what the reversion and subsequent failure (genre-wise) would have sounded like. Both musicians have been involved in countless other projects: Carla with Charming Hostess, Tin Hat, Book of Knots, 2 Foot Yard, and Fred Frith; Shahzad with Tom Waits, Eyvind Kang, Arto Lindsay, and even Mike Doughty (Ruby Vroom is better than you all think it is, but I'll save that tangent for another time). The list for both artists is of course, much longer, but there is only so much I am willing to write at 2:30 in the morning. Get it.

Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, Tatsuya Nakatani - From Between (SoSeditions, 2004)

2009-09-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here is a fantastic follow up post. The Doneda, Le Quan Ninh album was a huge hit, so I put the latter's drum solo up album. Well, here is another Doneda album, with Jack Wright and Nakatani. This is fantastic improv which is every bit as awesome as you're expecting. I won't really expound on this except for the best effect I got was with headphones paying direct attention to it, because the dynamic on this album between loud and soft are cavernous. A serious album... very cool.

Child's View - Funfair (Bubble Core, 1999)

2009-09-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

I remember simpler times, when Aphex Twin was our greatest new discovery, and we would listen to Boards of Canada while getting high on our way to marching band “parties”. The cops would only show up at the geekiest trombonist’s house, and we would have to play it cool. We were still only children, having been in high school for three years, but we wanted to reclaim our true childhood. Now our taste stretches beyond those of Pitchfork’s preordained “classics” and blogs are our main source of musical nutrition. We have jobs and responsibilities and wish we weren’t such pricks in high school. Still, that feeling of nostalgia creeps in every once in awhile, and that’s about the time we throw on Funfair by Child’s View. To me, this record is for being nostalgic about nostalgia. Aphex, Fennesz, Gutevolk, B.O.C.’s fascination with childhood, and the soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic all come to mind at various points throughout the record. Put it on on a lazy Sunday afternoon and feel like your age creep forward in time.

Michael O'Shea - Michael O'Shea (Dome, 1982)

2009-09-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

Found this recently via Danny's ratings. I'll leave the back story to Google, but I should say that street musicians of this caliber are very rare. There is one Chinese guy at Union Square that plays a similar instrument with drumsticks (!) and it sounds like Toumani Diabate playing a harpsichord. Indeed, that is basically what this album sounds like, especially the aggressive opening piece, which is the bulk of the album. Very spacey in small portions, I think the RYM designation as ambient is not too on, except for perhaps the blurry effects on a few notes. Check this out; more proof that amazing music is everywhere, and people do it only for the love.

Arnold Schönberg - Streichquartette I-IV (Montaigne, 1994)

2009-09-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much just another great set of pieces (and performances) in my recent modern composition binge. I've heard a few things by Schonberg, but I really like these smaller group pieces. Sometimes I think it is hard for a contemporary listener to understand what is so revolutionary here, and perhaps the is the composer's main triumph. When one is not too concerned with academic matters such as compositional methods, and simply lets the melodies and the layers take shape, what is revealed is an imagination that is unsurpassed in pieces that seem intensely classy to this day. Reading Alex Ross' 'The Rest is Noise,' I wasn't sure that I wanted to listen to these simply because, well, ole Arnold is a right old blowhard/dickhead. Thankfully, as was the case with Miles Davis (equally dickish), these pieces reveal a fragile, vulnerable spirit, and are informed with a mesaure of feeling equal to the machismo their creator was known for.

Gol, Iancu Dumitrescu, Ana-maria Avram - Musique Directe (Pianam, 2008)

2009-09-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

Another revelation that I got thanks to the doc. I don't know much about the artists involved, but this was filed under the doc list about electro-acoustic peripherals. This is the quintessential scraping, electronic, etc. noise, in a more academic, avantgarde type vein. One thing I like about these pieces is how there seems to be a narrative, there are distinct characteristics for each track, and the recording is so clear. Quite excellent, and worth your time.

Los Glissandinos - Stand Clear (Creative Sources, 2005)

2009-09-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

Found this via Dufi's 5 rated albums, this is beautiful microtonal music which expands very gracefully, and focuses very little on the spit noises and much more on pure tone from the horns (it is ambient practically) and wind. I had been looking for this for a while, and when I finally found it, and looked up a little information on it for this blog, I realized it is yet another Creative Sources album. Seriously, that label is extremely good, and it gets almost no substantial coverage anywhere. I am going to start really focusing on its output over at Junkmedia. Please continue to support that site, too.

EmbryoNNCK - EmbryoNNCK (Sound at One, Staubgold, 2006)

2009-09-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

This is a one-of-a-kind one-time-only surprise pairing and special offering and "look we're coming out of our turtle shell to give you this" release. No-Neck Blues Band and Embryo. The two have never collaborated on record with any other band and, at the point NNCK chose to change that, their affinity for Embryo lied in time's unchanging flings, twists and turns. I guess No-Neck just see Embryo as their German equivalent from the 1970s. So what we have here is: two seven-member groups joining forces to create in fact one of the most easily-listenable works of NNCK's catalog, though that's not to say it's less valuable than any of the others.

There is a sentiment of communal euphoria beneath, and the pairing couldn't be more efficient. Gamelan Son of Lion is a reference point, if you want, and that should tell you a lot about how percussive this music is. Symmetric rhythms abound, and perfection is reached when Michiko's vocals accompany them. The themes and scales they use are Eastern, of course, but this is pantheistic music all around; and while you hear it, you realize how it encapsulates everything you'd ever need. One of the most relevant collaborations in recent years.

Christian Marclay - Records [1981-1989] (Atavistic, 1997)

2009-09-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Have been waiting on Marclay, because I used to be a turntablist purist, only favoring the highly technical hip-hop DJ variant, however a couple albums, and most importantly, the Canadian Wire (more or less) Music Works (which publishes quarterly), did several stories on a variety of turntable players. The reference for all of them was Marclay, and now I know why. These pieces are amazing, and really, I think the best understanding of this work is archival musique concrete. Inspiring people from Otomo Yoshihide to Philip Jeck, Marclay has so much surreal passion in these works. Let me know what you think about these works.

Twelve Thousand Days - The Devil In The Grain (Iceflower, 2001)

2009-09-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

So, what we have here is a nice piece of music probably most accurately described as dark ambient neofolk, which should come as no surprise since the participants are Martyn Bates (of Eyeless In Gaza and several other projects) and Alan Trench (of Orchis). To me, this definitely is some of the better neofolk I've heard, sidestepping the most obvious genre clichés and flirts with nationalist/racist imagery, and at the same time producing some of the more musically interesting stuff within that niche.

The music is dark and melancholic, which is what one probably expects from this genre, but with a very tasteful sound picture, and with Bates' lovely voice floating in and out of the spectrum. This is the perfect album for watching a clear night sky while drinking alone and just feeling that very romantic, longing feeling. Okay, maybe I'm getting a little bit sentimental here, but that's solely because I'm listening to it right now. Anyway, be sure to give this a spin!

Janek Schaefer - Le petit théâtre de Mercelis (Audiosphere, 2002)

2009-09-03T20:15:00.001-07:00

Ghostly ambient, electro acoustic pieces from Schaefer. If you listen to enough of this stuff, and if you listen to the stuff on this blog with any regularity, you do, you'll see the difference when you're dealing with the works of an experienced composer in this field. Very little sounds are given the right frequency (in both senses of the word), and just the right amplification. Stunning and large as static and breezes can be.

Elliott Carter - The Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 7 (Bridge, 2005)

2009-08-31T19:34:00.000-07:00

Exciting pieces from Carter, performed admirably. I think some of the percussion can be tiring, but so many of the other sounds are placed very neatly here. Carter is one I need to explore more, but I want to know if he has any chamber pieces that you people like. Let me know. Also, if you are really into the modern composition stuff that I posted recently on KiC, I want you to contact me about writing on Junkmedia.

Eugène Ysaÿe - Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, op.27 (ECM, 2004)

2009-08-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

Continuing my week of composition, here is a set of fantastic violin pieces. Much of the stuff I have been posting is ultra-modern, atonal at times, often dark. These are much more conventional, but the energy and beauty here is quite uncommon. Urgent, precise energy and stunning technique.

Robert Rutman & U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble - Bitter Suites (RutDog, 1979)

2009-08-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well, every time you think you've found something, you realize that, yes, the only reason this shit is on my computer is there has been a chain of custody (don't worry, too much law BS on the brain) from the moment it happened, a series of careful, loving people preserving moments of splendor from being lost. This, then, which should make sense, was known on RYM by about 12 people, and I realize that most of them probably rated this when Mutant Sounds unearthed it. There is a more informed post over there about this album, something I only realized after I had re-upped this. To the music, massive surges, drones with a great deal of color, really emote so beautifully. It is odd that something like this is not canon, simply because of its date and how it renders so much of the ensuing 30 years obsolete. Absolutely essential record, and I'm ashamed I didn't know about it earlier. Get in on the good stuff.

Pentimenti - Quiet Now (2009)

2009-08-17T18:34:00.001-07:00

This one came as a surprise, not because the dude behind Pentimenti doesn't have talent, because he does, and lots of it, but because of just how far he has taken this line of thinking. Quiet now is one of the most assured and patient albums I've heard in a while, a sort of 'Imperial Distortion' with moments of dark ambiance, and even certain touches of musique concrete. I think of the cover when I think of its atmosphere: the viewer has perfect vision, but what is out there is blurry. There is no easily discernible truth, and there never will be. This album's mood, then, is in part the somber realization that things will never be clear, and can never be clear. One theme I've applied to it while listening is the sense that, in the search for some sort of peace, for stasis, and for a sense of insight, is what leads one most astray. When you truly focus in on the sounds here, those are the moments when you travel into detached voices, harsher textures, and so on. In a sense, you're being punished for looking deeper. Perhaps Pentimenti is letting us in on his own dilemma, or maybe this is what summer looks like to those that are disoriented by heat, and don't have the benefit of blind, reckless youth to give us unthinking enthusiasm.

Is this a serious record? Very much so, but it is not a downer. This album is more likely, paradoxically, a mantra of concentration. Don't press too hard for meaning, but be aware of how things are. Returning to the cover, at just the right distance, the picture is perfectly clear. By stepping away, the image is natural, though slightly depersonalized (there is no face, and the figure seems to be leaving you). What better illustration of the world we live in today? And the music, sometimes lush, sometimes wholly hushed, as with the best of Jeck or Basinski, can't help but communicate a sense of sadness, but also a sense of wonderment detached from careless enthrallment. In other words, the music evokes a reaction of awe in the world, but it does not pair that awe to admiration. Simply, this world, this trap, must be respected in its achievement of total, inescapable dominance.

David Tudor - Music for Piano (1955-1967) (Editions RZ, 2007)

2009-08-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

I love this label. I own this, the Feldman piano pieces, and the Xenakis polytope collection. Tudor provided many of these masters with such inspiration, they wrote pieces specifically for him (some of which are on this set). He was a master of not just the structure of these pieces, but understanding the physical aspect, the recording environment within which her performed, and how distance and space could be manipulated to give depth beyond the notations. Speaking of notation, Tudor specialized in performing pieces that utilized flexible notation. Many composers around this time allowed his leeway to make the pieces into what inspired him. This is a testament to his playing, because most composers in the US around the mid-1900s predominantly considered the performer mere conduit of the compositions, what with hyper specific compositions and notes and instructions. Powerful men like Feldman are known to look over performances of his pieces and dictate "slower!," yet I have little doubt that Tudor got no such treatment. This is essential music, and is another in the long KiC streak of paying attention to this wonderful instrument.

Photek - Modus Operandi (Science, 1997)

2009-08-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I was listening to a couple things. The first was revisiting Autechre's 'Draft 7.30,' and I was sitting there, marvelling at the sophistication, and complexity of, their drum programming. Everything falls into itself, is so precise, and each angle can be focused on, almost creating a new track. The other thing I listened to was some dubstep by Clubroot, and while dubstep is completely different in style from latter-day Autechre, I noticed a similarity in the micro-programming. If you're not focusing, dubstep can seem repititious, and sort of samey. Indeed, lots of productions seem the same from a macro perspective. But if you listen very close, you can hear that, quite often, nothing is repeated. There are always changes, always moves with the drums that answer phrasing. It is constantly morphing, but, unlike Autechre, the rhythm is more obvious, more conventional.

With those things in mind, I decided today to do something long overdue, and that was revisit the ancestors of both sounds (well, at least distant cousins) - drum and bass, and here is something that is a representative album. You have a similarity in the macro feel between dubstep and drum and bass, but there is more emphasis on repetition, and patterns. This is partly due to its closer proximity to the earlier techno. The melodies are less morose, more jazzy, perhaps due to its proximity to house musics.

This might be dated, but I figured I would post something a little less known to tie all these little thoughts together. It is something I think most music lovers do, look for connections between sounds and eras. Looking back on the time when people first had the net, and there were grimey little 96 kbps d&b folders flying anonymously across the net (the genre's lack of emphasis on personality is another connection to dubstep), this stuff brings back memories. Have fun.

DJ Faust - Man or Myth? (Bomb Hip-Hop, 1998)

2009-08-11T09:21:00.001-07:00

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DJ Faust comes off as one of the most introspective of the "known" (how many really are?) turntablists. The music backs that up. There are the classic cuts that DJs appropriate here, sure, and if a record went without "fresh" screaching to a halt by some sharp cut, it would be a crime, but if you listen to the interludes, if you take the time to LISTEN... just listen for a moment to how all the parts come together, how the density is so variable, how the textures lock and unlock like the Earth's plates were made of velcro and were torn apart by an impatient higher power, you'll hear something. Just maybe, you'll see that, quite literally, hip-hop, abstract, instrumental, hand-made hip-hop, is the sound of the world aligning, and man shedding all but what is most essential. Turntablism is the next moment when, faced with a world of his own making, the musician decides to wing it. It is perhaps the most prepared and, conversely, most improv rich music there is. The underneath is the lost cousin of musique concrete, all smashed samples, psychedelic layering, impressionistic montages, but filtered through rhythm, made subservient to rhythm (it was called Style Wars for a reason). The surface is a jazz virtuoso. Listen to the lyricism of the solos, hear the reactions to the beat, hear the records answer one lick with another. If you can handle Evans solo on the sax, you can hear Faust chase his own tail, can't you? Sleep on this at your own risk.

Download.

Summons of Shining Ruins - Bird Requiem (Humming Conch, 2009)

2009-08-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tannoy frequencies sing notes of reverent mourn through the paved alleys of a submariner Pompeii. Undulating with the tide, guitar vibrations tear down walls, providing a constant rumble of percussion. Acoustic sonar blips break the roman dronescape tremors carrying with them the sirens of false rescue.

BIRD REQUIEM is the analogue creation of Summons of Shining Ruins, one of Shinobu Nemoto's respectable pseudonyms. All tracks on this intelligent and paced album are made using solely electric guitar sounds, stomp boxes and tape echo, all of which were compiled elegantly onto the final 4-track tape reel in a composed and balanced multitude.

The organic paraesthesia Shinobu's other releases carry is not quite nullified in BIRD REQUIEM, though slightly subdued. Though upon comparison this comes as a refreshing break from the Grandeur and ferocity of his usual profound drones.

Listening to this album as an MP3, despite availability as a free download, seems somehow a betrayal to the organic and analog input, so to put minds at ease it is also available on Cassette tape, which features an extra two tracks unavailable to the digital masses.

Both the Download and the tape are available here

Alfred Schnittke - Piano Music [Boris Berman] (Chandos, 1998)

2009-08-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I am posting some more piano pieces, this time by Schnittke. Not too much to add to this, although I should say that perhaps this is more subdued, and somewhat more melodic, than the normal piano fare I post (and much more conventional that my renewed interest in prepared piano (thanks, Danny >:( ) which I plan to post to this blog soon enough). I found this on Doc's page long before I actually started talking to Doc, if I remember right, so maybe he has something to add. Peace.

Hitoshi Kojo - Ezo (Alluvial, 2009)

2009-08-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

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The limited 10-inch Ezo allows the versatile Hitoshi Kojo to enchant the listener with vague notions of animism and potential energy. As opposed to his fascinating Kodama project — a partnership with Michael Northam that was typified by bursting, electronic builds, repetition, and long-form structure that demanded the listener to grasp for context and meaning — Ezo, due to both its short length and its powerful, immediate initial burst, immediately immerses the listener in a largely natural, fast-paced world. It would serve as a natural contrast, in fact, to place Ezo’s familiar sounds of sloshing water and scraping metal, at all points filling the sound spectrum, with the alternately full and empty electronic drones and close-listening activities that menace and stare throughout Kodoma’s Turning Leaf Migrations.

To understand Ezo, and to get a sense for why it is an exciting record, it is important to see its place in Kojo’s 2009 output. Ezo serves as a bridge between the highly successful Kodama and the unsuccessful drone/ambient project Libellula, a trio comprised of Kojo, Sebastian Clinger, and the aforementioned Northam. (2) saw Libellula become too subdued, too reliant on nuance, and because both the nuance lacked detail and the structure lacked sufficient differentiation from a standard genre piece, the result was forgettable. Kodama solved all these problems, but the results were only tangentially related to drone. Instead of relying on new streams to add color to a drone, Turning Leaf Migrations varied the density, displayed a masterful grasp of movement within the stereo spectrum, and utilized a host of different sound sources, be they electronics, found sounds (such as water, insects, and walking), or whatever was on hand.

While Ezo predates the release of both of these records, it was constructed well after them. Kojo, cryptically explaining his thought process, speaks of the sound sources heard on the album, the resonances of everyday objects, and the spaces that contain those objects. Tellingly, he also makes reference to the artifact, the very record in discussion here. Each pressed record is its own object, with its own resonance, to be used and slowly degraded like anything else. Perhaps to Kojo, all physical objects have powerful potential resonances, and the environment within which they are found is the key to bringing forth such sounds. With this approach, Ezo differentiates itself from (2) in that it properly illustrates, rather than alludes to, the sound within things. Likewise, Turning Leaf Migrations is distinguished from Ezo by its exponentially greater direct manipulation of sounds. In other words, Kojo is letting things speak for themselves.

That said, Kojo’s artistic task, as with most musicians utilizing found sounds, is to get these things to say something, to mean something. The chosen approach is normally juxtaposition and/or layering, and Ezo is no exception. The introductory sound of pouring water quickly turns from serene to tumultuous, subtly morphing into a swirling sound, ice cubes seemingly flush to the edge of a cup, pressed harder and harder as scraping metal and low-register vibrations form an abrasive focal point. High-pitched activity towards the top of the composition gives way to a multiplication of the initial water motion, just as the metallic scraping and rumbling become increasingly unhinged.

Without spoiling the record’s moment-by-moment development, what does it mean? Ezo is an interpretation not only of Kojo’s surroundings, but also of Kojo himself. After all, if the object can beget the sound, and the sound can beget a new object, isn’t the architect also a layer and also an artifact? It stands to reason, then, that Kojo has his own resonance, and to unlock it, to decipher his meaning, you must place him in some context — namely, this record. Coupled with notions of impermanence; the destructive, unstoppable force of water that is ever-present on this record; and the building, manic metallic noises, Kojo could be exploring notions of his own degradation — a sense of invisible but surely present decay of his self and the emotions those realizations foster: fear, anger, aggression, helplessness. Ezo therefore represents a development for Kojo, a progression from passive, to active, to aware.

In short, Ezo is the crucial link that turns three albums into a telling, personal character arc, where both the works and the artist are revealed as fragile, organic things. Ezo is the sound of an artist becoming self-aware and deciding to sculpt awareness from whatever happens to be within arm’s reach.

Aldo Clementi & Riccardo Nova - Split (Stradivarius, 1993)

2009-08-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

Another communique from docperkins:

Aldo Clementi’s pieces are magisterial as usual, and condensed, without ever being – or sounding – compacted, they irradiate effortless aural insight. My favourite among them (today) is the one called Berceuse, even though it is not better accomplished than the others, which are also impressively cohesive, by the way.

Now, the great surprises of the collection were the pieces by Riccardo Nova. A youngster in the hood, born in 1960, Nova is not only imbued with the canon that links up his work with that of Webern, Scelsi, Dallapiccola and Clementi, but he also refuses to merely repeat its features or test its vast array of technical possibilities, which in itself would be enough for him to spawn great albums.

Instead, he takes up a couple of entries and dramatically expands some structure devices, to great effect and provocation. The said devices are drawing on the percussive band of the works . You will detect vestiges that are pulled forth from Bartók – bear in mind “The Miraculous Mandarin” – through Scelsi, plus that sonic brick layering created by Clementi, and there you are. Nova’s atonal rollercoaster starting with Sex Nova Organa, and ending up with Sequentia Super Sex Nova Organa, takes up sex as practice and concept, enveloped in a kind of music that convinces one that sometimes it is preposterous to separate idea and act.

Don Cherry - Eternal Rhythm (MPS, 1969)

2009-08-02T12:22:00.001-07:00

One of the greatest free jazz efforts ever. Cherry is known for a couple things, first, his time with Ornette when they set the jazz world on its ear. Later, Cherry fused a lot of "world" sounds into the music, and began playing extended sets. This is one of the best, but he has a lot of other, fine albums in this vein, especially Brown Rice. Lots of things by Cherry are shamefully out of print.

Hosts - A Lesson, in Theory (2009)

2009-07-31T19:39:00.001-07:00

This had gotten shuffled into some of my other albums, and I only recently listened to it after Alex said that some of the Marina Rosenfeld album worked like this. Well, he was not too far off. This album is sort of interesting because there is a pairing between noise and piano here that starts in unison, but eventually ends up out of phase. Both sort of work together, and end up working independantly of each other. Ultimately this album is interesting because these two elements compliment one another, but work on their own. The piano is sort of wandering around, and has good moments, and the noise is treated nicely, brought to the forefront, made more active, etc. Very good release.

Download.

Sun City Girls - Djinn Funnel (Nashazphone, 2006)

2009-07-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

This is one of the first SCG albums that I have really, really liked. I think the simplicity of the approach, which basically consists of some guitar jams (of course, as we know, these jams are flavored with a host of styles and tempos), is what let this impact me so immediately when I listened to it again the other day. From start to end, the guitar interplay and approach is exciting, I feel the natural absorption of other styles, and I also feel something of an improvisatory imperative here. Sure, there are more adventurous SCG albums, and maybe this is an easy way out, to like a sorta straightforward one, but whatever. I likes what I likes.

Stefan Wolpe - Compositions for Piano (1920-1952) [David Holzman] (Bridge, 2002)

2009-07-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

You know, the interesting thing about this is that it is sooooo old (the pieces, anyway), and the playing is so diverse. This sort of is the composition equivalent to Lennie Tristano's 'Descent into the Maelstrom' for me, ie. you can always go a little bit earlier to locate the atonality, the out playing, the adventurousness that you think exists in your heroes initially. Like Alex points out, this dude taught Feldman. I did not know that, and given some of the hyperactivity, I think Morton only took some from him (as all good students probably do). Whatever the case may be, this is piano work, and how many times have I said that I am biased towards piano pieces as determining the ability of a composer? Probably plenty given the downloads I've passed on, and this one is no different, and this one surely passes muster. Enjoy some crazy piano works, and tell me that there is something new under the sun while you're at it.

Alan Lamb - Original Masters-Night Passage (Dorobo, 1998)

2009-07-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lag between the post and the info. If you're still holding out on this, I should say that this is one of my absolutely favorite "noise" albums (although this is certainly not harsh or anything, perhaps composition is better, I really don't know if you can fit this under one thing). If you'll look at the cover for a moment, it sort of look like's Godspeed's 'Infinity' album, and another that I'm blanking on, and both of those albums, in their intent on creating an electric atmosphere of dread, hope, renewal and ultimately stasis are bested by this very album. I'm sure that I'll eventually bless Mr. Lamb with a 5 star rating for this, if that tells you anything. In any event, dive into this if you want to be caught up in the best vortex yet caught on disc. Essential.

Love Of Life Orchestra – Extended Niceties 12” (Lust/Unlust music, 1980)

2009-07-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

It’s not easy for me reviewing something I’m so much emotionally attached to. Here’s the warmest, coolest and most intelligent plastic sound of NYC in the Eighties, mixing avant-garde, No-Wave and disco, coming from the same context of Arthur Russell and Rhys Chatham just to name 2 other favorites of mine, and featuring here choruses, keyboards, and even David Byrne and Arto Lindsay on guitars on “Beginning of the heartbreak”. The Love of Life Orchestra is a Peter Gordon’s creature, and this is maybe one of his best releases under the LOLO nom de plume, unfortunately out of print from what I know (the Italian label New Tone released it on CD along with “Geneve” years ago, but I guess the CD is hard to find too). Peter is still young and active, writing and playing music, sharing the typical curiosity of NYC people in mixing cultures. When I think about composers living in NYC (Zorn or Sharp for example) it always comes to my mind the image of interweaving fragments of the most different materials, something like very complex and elaborate assemblages, with their own strong identity despite they may be built out of apparently inert materials. You might think about Julian Schnabel and David Salle at this point, but the music scene was, without doubts, much more interesting and clever than the one of the famous post-modern painters in NYC, because musicians and composers have been able, in my opinion, to solve what visual artists have left unsolved: matching the appeal of the mass culture, from which their building materials’ came from, with a critical approach towards it. In previous years, Warhol was one of the few who solved this knot, and he did it by… leaving it unsolved and ambiguous. When something is not problematic, when it tells you the answer, then it’s not worth exploring anymore. You could never tell if Warhol was trying to please your eyes or to pull your legs, that’s why he will always be discussed, while Schnabel and Ross Bleckner are already almost forgotten.

For Arthur Russell these materials were few, but they included bubblegum pop and disco, which in his hands became anyway the best possible atmosphere for his moving, melancholic and beautifully heartbreaking pieces. Peter Gordon’s attitude, in his first releases at least, is not much far from here, except for the evident presence of a very subtle irony, in being conscious of playing with the natural attitude (both cultural – read: due to the media’s mAssage – and “natural”, as the shamans teach) of the listener’s towards “pop” repetitive structures.

This 12” is a very good example: you might find it cheesy at the beginning, but you can’t help being dragged into it, and if you listen closely you’ll realize it’s not less elaborate than the Talking Heads of the same period, and that everything has its own meaning in the composition, despite it sounds like a disco 12” (well, back when I used to move on the dancefloor I would have given everything to find a DJ who played this stuff! Later I’ve been playing it myself anyway, eheh). Listening to “Beginning of the heartbreak/Don't, Don't” you’ll also realize for sure that we really don’t need at all bands like !!!, because someone else already did much better.

If you like this, and are interested in checking out Peter’s other releases, I especially recommend “Star Jaws”, one of my favourite albums of those NYC days; I have it on vinyl, and I won’t post it here since Lovely Music reprinted it last year in CD: it’s more oriented towards pop and minimalism at the same time, and I could never get tired of it.

Beginning of the Niceties

P.S.: if you think about the innovative videos coming from The Kitchen (almost the same people, in the same city, in the same years), don't you find the cover perfect too?

Marina Rosenfeld - The Sheer Frost Orchestra: Drop, Hop, Drone, Scratch, Slide & A For Anything (Charhizma, 2001)

2009-07-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sounds like someone told Glenn Branca to compose one of his guitar symphonies in eai form, and Rhys Chatham came on top of it. I've decided this IS the proper review. ha But really, there is so much going on here, I would say that those touchstones will give you a starting point as to what to expect. I was enthralled with this album because it seemed like a throwback in terms of ambition, a sort of "let's tackle a big guitar affair, and make it planned and messy all at once," as if the aforementioned never existed, yet were about to be channeled. If that doesn't make sense, I don't blame you. The point is that this seems perfect in a couple of eras, and presents a good amount of high quality moments. You should certainly check this out if you're into any of the extended guitar things that have been posted here (Tammen, Bailey, whatever) and on Danny's blog (Xu Cheng), not because they sound alike, but because they're really adventurous with the old six string. Loves ya.

Buy. (Mircosuoni)

Toru Takemitsu - Complete Piano Works 1952-1990 (Woodward) (Etcetera, 1991)

2009-07-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

No real need for explanation. I actually fell in love with Takemitsu, after having a liking for him, when I heard a friend of mine perform some of his pieces for guitar. I think that is was sort of a bridge between some of the extreme, technical, stern composers that I loved for the '50s or so, and some of the more simple, melodic music that I naturally gravitate to. Maybe it betrays something American about me, but for some reason I think that, yes, all different avenues and instruments for compositions are great, but you can really tell a composer's mettle by what they do with the keys of the piano. Like some of the other piano-centric collections I've posted here, I don't really try to make an appeal to you for this music beyond telling you it has a great impact on me emotionally, and it seems to contain enough surprises and gestures to keep it fresh and distinctive. Enjoy!

Axolotl - Telesma (Spooky Action, 2005)

2009-07-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, Axolotl - you've made one of the most awesome ambient/drone/textured albums of the last ten years. Karl Bauer here produces an album that is sort of like Fennesz (if that is the most obvious, widely known "sound" like this, but really, it is very different - ok, in the drone and static vein), but much more focused on a single type of sound. I like his other work, but this is by far the best, a collection of different drones and noise that move in and out of different densities of static and noise. I might post Belong soon, and it is a good comparison to this.

Förklädd Gud - Jazz I Sverige 77 (Caprice, 1977)

2009-07-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

Featured on the NWW list, I don't know a ton about this artist, or the story behind the creation of this album. I do know that this is Swedish, and that it is some crazy-good avant-jazz/free jazz. I find a few things about odd lineups, and about other releases, but this is the one that I like best, so if you have any information, it would be much appreciated. I think this is what Small Town Super Jazz wishes it were releasing on a daily basis. Check it out.

Anthony Braxton - Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (Leo, 1993)

2009-07-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

This is a double-CD set documenting the last show of Braxton's quartet's tour of England back in 1985, which was later released in 1993. Each CD has an extensive interview following the respective sets, which are both fantastic. Indeed, I consider this to be some of Braxton's best work for a few reasons. There is the outstanding lineup: Marilyn Crispell on piano, Mark Dresser on bass, and Gerry Hemingway on drums. If you've seen my jazz list, you'll notice that I have a Crispell/Hemingway duo album on there, so you can imagine my excitement when I realized they were paired with Braxton during a creative high point for Anthony. Then there is the music: not only does this live up to those expectations, it surpasses them. Predating much of my favorite late-'90s "downtown scene" records by a decade, this album is rivaled by maybe only 'The Peach Orchard' in terms of its ability to maintain momentum, rather than indulging in the sputtering rhythms (stop-start-stop) and easy avantgarde gestures. Each solo is so full of ideas, and there is a more traditional sense of interplay between the intruments, even if this is certainly towards the free end of the spectrum.

On top of music, the set features some of the most enlightening insights I've heard about this brand of jazz. As opposed to some things I've heard, either from Leo Smith, or even Susie Ibarra, where there is a level of disconnect from this music from the jazz lineage, as if it somehow ceased to be jazz at some point, Braxton, while acknowledging it is new and difficult to classify, is surprisingly reverent towards jazz masters, most importantly John Coltrane. Also, he sees his music not as a departure from jazz as a reaction to it, a supplement, etc. I think this is a much less pretentious appraisal, and I think it is only fair to grant these musicians the "new" aspect as long as they acknowledge their place in the continuum. I'm adamant about this often because jazz, more than almost any music, regardless of what variant of jazz we're talking about, is about the act of listening - if your music is based in large part on listening to one another, and it involves some of the traditional jazz instruments, I don't understand the aversion.

Either way, this great record is one of the best in the genre, period.

Buy. (Leo Records)

Richard Garet & Brendan Murray - Of Distance (2009)

2009-07-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I removed the link before I even got a chance to review this. Such is the way of blogs. I truly apologize to the person who contacted me about the link, and I promise that no KiC post will offer anything for download from your label again. I should point out, however, that without the blogs, I would not have ever heard about this release, or your fine label. I think this speaks in part to the power of grass roots/word of mouth publicity. There is just too much new music, and too many reissues I'm waiting on, to prevent this sort of thing from falling through the cracks. Now I'd be thrilled to own this in my CD collection. However, I feel that KiC, and other MP3 blogs, sometimes force labels to accept this point of view, which is unfair. Just as the old bands were frustrated when their records couldn't be found in the local record stores, I'm sure there is a sinking feeling attached to finding one's album on an MP3 blog. We've gotten great feedback from several artists for the effort of putting obscure releases neglected by labels out there, but we've also been asked to pull things. From here on, I plan to be more active in contacting labels prior to any posting of new (calendar year) material, and I also want to extend a hand to the labels we've posted, and to artists we've yet to post.

USE THIS THREAD to request coverage of a release, or to set up contacts with KiC. I would love to review your material, and I won't post it to the net. Instead, I'll give a direct link to your label's ordering page if I like the record. If I don't, I'll write the review, and post it to one of the 'zines I write for. This is about sharing great music, and I want labels and artists to think of this as KiC doing promotional work for free, rather than the antagonistic relationship a few see in this situation.

To this end, KiC is in the early stages of a redesign and move to a legitamate URL, which will basically be like Pitchfork, or Dusted, but covering this sort of music. I know there is a glut of review sites, but few cover the kind of things we try to here, so I think it will be a welcome addition, and allow for more legitimacy and a wider audience for great music. Stay tuned!

Alumbrados - The Stone of the Wise (CDR, 2005)

2009-07-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

This has a lot of different things going on. I'm not that into the intro of this, because I think immediately diving into a MLK speech (I'm pretty sure it is MLK) and having vague intensity build-ups, is something countless other people have already done, and Alumbrados don't really add much to the formula. However, I posted this for a reason. I'm hoping you either look past (or skip) the first track and get into the meat of this album. If you do, you'll see that there is a nice blend of organic sounds (guitar, field recordings) buffetting one of the best folk-drones I've heard in the last few years. Sure, like all albums, this one is tied to a ordinary, but personal, experience. The full swell of the drone hit me just as a gigantic, Manhattan-bound train was discharging a couple thousand people, and I saw so much clarity and variety, delivered with subtlety, in this drone as to give each person coursing through the station their own special portion.

If you're a fan of drone, you know that it is pretty easy to make a pleasant drone, but very hard to make one distinctive from others, or capable of giving you new feelings upon second listens. This does that. Indeed, I see the other stuff on this record as a bonus. Let me know if you're feeling the other portions. Enjoy!

Kiko C. Esseiva - Sous les Étoiles (Hinterzimmer, 2008)

2009-07-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

This is sort of a common type of album for me to post. A mish-mash of genres, typified by a mix of drones/electronics with acoustic instruments. If I were to tell you that this prominently features violin, you might guess what it would sound like. Let me tell you: it is not like that, and it is damn good. Indeed, while I think it is in line with a lot of things I've been selecting, the violin, the sparse feel at the beginning of tracks (tracks that become intense, dense, and sometimes out of control) takes this into a place that is not so common. In short, I think this bridges some of the things I've posted this year in that its components and initial approach speak to the avantgarde and layered compositions I'm fond of, but its intensity and character speak to more of the drone I've been passing on. Maybe this is what Tony Conrad would do if he wanted to try his hand at surrealism and layering.

Denis Charles - Captain of the Deep (Eremite, 1998)

2009-06-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

You can sorta judge a book by its cover, dear KiC fans. Yes, of course this is a jazz album. A damn good one, I might add. This is the only album I know with the late Charles on it, and the only other sideman I know here is the highly underrated Jemeel Moondoc (someone I have half a mind to feature in a future post), but this is high quality. I think people on RYM are starting to pick up on this as a highly enjoyable, lost avantgarde/downtown type of thing. Good in all the ways jazz is supposed to be, so I'll let you explore beyond that. Let me know if you know more than I do about the participants; I'm very interested in hearing more.

Millions - The Notebook Behind Your Eyes (2008)

2009-06-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

What you've been dealing with this week is me passing on to you my "protection music." These last few discs all will serve to overpower the cacophony of the NYC and NJ transit systems, lending an aural context to these movements that make sense from a macro perspective, but feel oppressive and chaotic in person. Additionally, despite the unimaginitive name, and my seeming mid-09 burnout on drone, Millions have here one of the best drone albums I've heard since Birchville Cat Motel's 'Chi Vampires.' I wanted to hate this album, but I was won over by the tone range maintained in the drones, the steady, dense climb that climaxed well after I expected it to, ending up at a pitch where I normally only expect "noise" to go.

Additionally, I like this album for its personal illustration for how I use it. See, nestled in between two breathtaking drones is a quiet passage that undulates just so, always threatening to burst, but existing mostly to tease and defy expectations. This section sets up the last portion of the record perfectly, but also has come to represent for me the calm that I want the bookend drones to protect me from. Moving through the crowds has never been this stylishly ascendant. Awesome album.

Nurse With Wound - The Surveillance Lounge (2009)

2009-06-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

I took down the original review because I think it was misleading. I was in no way saying that the two artists I referenced, Aphex Twin and NWW, were similar in sound. What I was saying was that, using Aphex Twin as a widely known figure, and therefore a good reference point, the creation of this album and an Aphex Twin work, specifically Selected Ambient II, represented both a similar career move, and a similar challenge to the listeners. That career move is doing something out of character, or at least, something not in keeping with the perceived philosophy of a longstanding project. This album, being largely formulaic ambient and static, is interesting in its own right, but puzzling coming from NWW because countless, much less accomplished, artists could produce this. I used with Aphex Twin analogy because, at the time of SAW II, most people considered that "easy to make" and below par.

The second point on the challenge to the listener: when an established, cutting edge artist, gives you something that is superficially, and perhaps ultimately, average and formulaic, how are you to take it? Do you eschew the biases that would let you pan it were it produced under a different name? Do you relisten? Do you examine the notion of artists having cache and speculate as to the artist's subjective take on their work? In short, why do we give known artists breaks in some instance?

I feel that this work, taken on its own, is average, and have rated it as such. I gave it several trys because I respect NWW, and each time I enjoyed it, but was left with the same feeling. If you can understand my revised take on the album, I'd like to know what you think.

Nobuo Yamada - Daydream of Wok (CDR, 2009)

2009-06-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

This was a very, very pleasant surprise. Basically weird folk drone noises coalesce into a dark Keiji Haino type maelstrom, or at the very least, something that threatens to go that path, but sort of backs off. Being a live show, I'm amazed by a few things: the recording quality, the patience of the audience (New York crowds can't STFU during shows, it pisses me off), and the texture. I also like how the pieces unfold organically, without any themes forced. I've had a very good week re: drone/noise type things, but if you've liked my picks so far, you'll probably like this best.

No-Neck Blues Band - At 6 A.M. We Become the Police (Locust, 2009)

2009-06-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, you guys know this came out, right? I can't believe that a band of NNCK's stature has gotten absolutely zero buzz so far. I only knew this came out because I stalked their page on RYM. Seriously? Ok, I might be in the distinct minority, but I think NNCK's fusion of Japanese drama forms used to portray the battle of the sexes mixed with a total dedication to free improv (and they're pretty nice; I've seen them in person a few times, and they're very chill - until they get on stage, that is) is amazing. This is no exception. Indeed, I think this really is borne out of their more recent shows, as the arrival of the groove, and the density of the sounds are a good match with what they're doing.

Carlos Maria Trindade / Nuno Canavarro - Mr. Wollogallu (1991)

2009-06-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

I don't think this is going to become a top-rated release, but there are at least three good reasons to post it. First, apparently very few people know about this (i just discovered by chance that Mutant Sounds already posted it, anyway); second, it contains the only tracks available by Nuno Canavarro besides the Plux Quba masterpiece (if you don't know this album, back in stock thanks to O'Rourke's Moikai label, you should really get a copy asap!); third, also C.M.Trindade's tracks, even if somehow cheesy (like he was a portoguese version of Ruben Garcia) contain lyrical and inspired moments, highly enjoyable like soothing down in a sunny summer day, and also give the temperature of the musical climate in which Canavarro's magical record took form, making it seem a little less alien, and even warmer. It's like Carlos Maria's and Nuno's tunes here hadn't been processed by that abstract time machine which led to Plux Quba, and at the same time we now realize where the magic atmosphere of that record lies: our imagination has to rebuild those filtered sounds which now appear clearly to be a distant echo of this.

It's true, they look better when they melt and mix with the world to become Echo, veiled and covered with beautiful dresses of analogic glitch processing, but in their naked form they remain nonetheless sensual and intimate.

If you take it as a simple portoguese appetizer, something lighter than what the Penguin Café Orchestra could have been elsewhere, this will still make sense.

Take a walk in Wollogallu's Locus Solus

TwinSisterMoon - The Hollow Mountain (Ultra Hard Gel, 2009)

2009-06-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been pimping NSB, and TSM for a long, long time it seems. Sure, 2005 is not that long ago, but it is when you have an insatiable music appetite. The staying power of this duo never ceases to amaze me, however, aside from 'Dance...' the best thing in their output, for my money, is TSM's 'When Stars Glide Through Solid,' a collection of the most pristine, black void drone and folk music, all mirrors, bent lenses and subtle tricks. So much more was going on with that album than people probably first noticed. I think the timing of this album is curious. We're coming off 2008 with NSB overload, and this year has not been that different (less releases, but the same amount, given the sheer length of their albums). What do you do when your fans show fatigue? You release a solid as Hell, bordering on excellent, collection of songs (see, not just drones), which was your strong suit to begin with. Yes, there are drones, yes there is a psychedelic edge to this, but it is not at the price of losing the songs. I love the vocals, the dour atmosphere, and the pace of this album. Exactly what I was hoping for, and executed better than I could have expected.

Richard Youngs - Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits (Sonic Oyster Records, 2009)

2009-06-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

I believe this is already out of print, so it should be safe to post. This supposedly started as a dare to see if Youngs could do a straight-up pop album. I'd say he succeeded. This is the polar opposite of the widely-enjoyed Sapphie. The quivering falsetto from that record is gone, as is the minimalism and soul-destroying atmosphere. There are tons of drum machines and so-so harmonies, but that's not meant to be a detracting statement. Ultrahits reminds me of some of the stuff on the Left of the Dial boxset from a few years back at times, and at other times, well, I don't know, maybe Robert Wyatt. One of the best of 2009.

Yellow Swans - Dreamed Yellow Swans (PACrec, 2005)

2009-06-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, third post in one day. Blowing a mini load has never felt so good, and in the case of this album, never been so rad. I saw Yellow Swans in a dank apartment turned venue, and I have to say, although the "no war but class war" rhetoric was yawn worthy, the contraptions, which looked like a film projector attached to that French airlines black box. Guess what they said, "Someone set up us the bomb." Old meme, sorry. But really, the textures were really great, and live the flow into eachother in a sort of swirl that is hypnotic, especially in the higher frequencies.

Now that they're gone, it is sad to think that people are just really catching onto them at the level of, say, Black Dice or whatever. Let me know what you think. This might be top 20 of the decade.

Planxty - Planxty (Polydor, 1973)

2009-06-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

A year of silence and I return, breaking Dark Magus' positively saint-like streak of the almost sole distributor here of beautiful music. However popular this is (top-rated Celtic folk), I'd always found it a bitch to find on the blogosphere, and upon pointing this out to a friend, got it duly uploaded. May as well have it up on here for others' convenience too. Legendary revivalists. .m4a (sorry chaps who can't play that format), 320kbps VBR. 'Sall.

Lindsay Cooper - Angel on the Bridge (ABC, 1991)

2009-06-11T06:43:00.000-07:00

Alright, the train ride yesterday convinced me that this link I posted to the KiC group was being too neglected, and needed KiC exposure. BTW, people, the last.fm group is a great place to meet up with other people into the blog. I'm sure you'll enjoy the extras and the recommendations that frequently pop up there.

This here record is pretty neat, albeit mysterious to me. I can't find too much information on it after a cursory Google search, and it is not on the discogs page, but I believe this is some of Cooper's soundtrack work. Finding this was the result of some trolling on RYM, and the reward is an album of delicate brass work, hushed vocals, pleasant melodies and a serenity only produced by the most rare albums. Not the darkest or most avantgarde thing ever, Angel on the Bridge still has a mellow feel to it that could possibly be born of acceptance as opposed to naivete.

I greatly appreciate how the mood is consistent, yet the execution is highly dynamic. I have the two-cd set of some of Cooper's other stuff. Lemme know if you like this.

Jacques Coursil - Black Suite (BYG, 1969)

2009-06-08T07:37:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm not sure this is another Godspelized. In fact, I'm sure it is not. Sorry, Alex. However, what this is is another killer record from 1969, perhaps one of the highpoint years in jazz. So much was happening, and this French, future teacher trumpeter (and also current Tzadik recording artist) had something to say as well. The only other Coursil I've heard from this period is also on BYG (the label that I've heard a lot of stories about; one being the Art Ensemble needed to pull a gun on the guy to get him to go to an ATM to get paid, and that the reissues are handled, or were handled for a time, by a mafia guy that didn't really give a shit about the music) and is call 'Way Ahead' (although I've seen some covers mis-printed titled 'Way head').

This is avantgarde through and through. There are rattles, alternate percussion, dijointed solos, exploration of timbre, you name it. Indeed, it sounds very fresh today because it has this downtown feel to it. No wonder Zorn hooked up with this guy. There was a time when all I would listen to was Miles, and immediately after that, I wanted to find alternate ways of playing the trumpet. For such a simple instrument, it is capable of such beauty, and considering the difficulty in mustering proper tones out of it, much less having compositional chops to go along with the technical ones, you'll find that very thing here.

Woefully underheard, you need to look into this.

David S. Ware - Godspelized (DIW, 1997)

2009-06-07T17:27:00.001-07:00

An amazing album, with surprisingly few ratings. When I checked this out, I thought maybe a couple hundred people would have heard this, but actually there are only around 35 ratings. What you have here is one of the absolute best 90s jazz albums, maybe only behind Peach Orchard. I LOVE the patient development of theme on here, the urgency and definition of the melodies, and the power of Ware's playing. I've heard other Ware albums, and, especially on things like Strings, I think the setting or the "gimmick" can dominate here and there. This, by contrast, is just what you want, very energized, new thing music is about hearing and joy of playing. Treat this beauty with care.

John Butcher - The Geometry of Sentiment (Emanem, 2007)

2009-06-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

The bonus 2007 post. John Butcher is a relatively new (last 3 years or so) find for me. Here is the first thing of his that really clicked. Since I've heard this album, he went from someone that potentially was worth looking into to someone that I have to keep tabs on as many of his projects as possible. What we have here is perhaps my favorite non-Braxton saxophone solo album. This kills anything Evan Parker did in his first albums, if that will give you my assessment of the quality. Indeed, I was amazed that this was done with so few elements. Not only does Butcher wring a wide variety of sounds from his axe, he is able to employ those elements masterfully by creating developments and evolutions within the pieces. You never get that annoying disjointed feeling of "this is just scales" or whatever here; each moment has greater meaning, and you get that feeling because Butcher seemingly doesn't take his eye of the matter at hand. Fantastic music, and well worth a listen (both this and the previous album have less than 23 ratings, so please look into these records, and check out their other stuff).

Michael Fahres - The Tubes (Cold Blue, 2007)

2009-06-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

There are going to be a couple more things posted from 2007. I guess since we're 2+ years away now (time flies, I still remember hearing this for the first time), this should be ok to post. The first couple tracks on this are very good, and of course I like the whole thing, but if you want to be sure you're up for tackling those longer tracks, skip to the last piece. It is only 7 minutes, and is the highlight. It starts off with much more activity, denser samples, and a greater frequency of manipulation. This is still modern music that represents a learned fusion between musique concrete, ambient, and sound collage, but in a way, the effect is eai in that there are long passages in the longer pieces of static (not the sound of static, but as opposed to dynamic) sound where your focus is subtley manipulated via a shifting amount of volume applied to different points of the sound source (ie. the speaker gets louder at top, then quieter at top, and louder at the bottom). Maybe it is the audio equivalent of an optical illusion, the result of staring for too long at one point. Either way, this is your chance to get plenty out of a little extra effort. Trust me, it isn't a donkey.

Yes, Collapse - Final Diagnosis (Crucial Bliss, 2007)

2009-06-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

Bonus post: sorta more of the same, again. I might like this one even better, although the composition elements are lesser here, and the textures play a bigger role. I waited a couple years to push this to see if anyone picked up on it, but I'm the only guy on RYM so far to rate this. Such a shame, because this is wonderful.

Loachfillet - Cut Throat Rogues (Fish Pies, 2006)

2009-06-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Here is the first of two posts of cutting edge noise/avantgarde, which I'm almost positive I found originally via the amazing blog, Smooth Assailing. I don't remember much about this record, which is a shame because I play this regularly, which is rare. Like my follow up post, this one is rich in texture, but is not a harsh noise experience, but more an avantgarde record, one fairly common here, but with more abrasive components. I think it is these components that give it a connection to noise, but I think of it sometimes as distended industrial, basically what would industrial be if its motor was taken out. DON'T let that discourage you (I've seen the lower download numbers when I use the word "industrial"). I'm not talking about NiN, I'm talking Nurse With Wound or Coil, that industrial. Let me know what you think, if this is something that KiC readers like.

Pharoah Sanders - Live at The East (Impulse!, 1972)

2009-06-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

Alex, you wanted more Pharoah, and here it is. Maybe this is my absolute favorite of his. Not that many people (23) have rated this, and that is a damn shame, because this live date is sooooo good. I'm not sure of who all is on here, but I know Stanley Clarke and Gary Bartz (who was also in Miles Davis' killer electric bands with Cosey, etc.) are here.

If you know Pharoah's 70s material, you'll know what to expect here, but you will be stunned by how freaking cool it is live, and how into it they are here. Prepare for a new favorite.

William Parker - The Peach Orchard (AUM Fidelity, 1998)

2009-06-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Quite simply, THE album of the 90s. For the longest time, I was held by my teenage sensibilities, from Loveless to OK Computer (yes, I admit it, sorry). I discovered this a couple (maybe four now?) years back, and I finally made the effort to purchase my own copy (off of which this is ripped at a high bitrate) last year. There are older masterpieces, from In a Silent Way, etc. etc. (you can see my list), but none better. That is lofty praise, but this is an album that earns it. If you've followed this blog for any period of time, you know that I like a lot, but love a little. I LOVE this album. Each and every moment on this album is the culmination of the downtown scene, where jazz and the avantgarde tendencies once diverged and then came together, on equal footing, to discuss their adventures and collaborate.

This music is FREE, but not in the sense of a blowout, but moreso freely lyrical. Indeed, Cooper-Moore amazes me. I love no other collection of piano solos more than those that exist on here, and I just posted work from a master and idol, Andrew Hill. That deserves praise for how wonderful it is, and where it is in the timeline of music, but this album's density, complexity and precision, obliterate most of what came before it. If you've ever heard Susie Ibarra pontificate on the music, you'd think she was a token or sluggish. If you've ever heard her play, you'd realize that her inability to pass off interesting ideas about the music (I'm referring to a recent DVD about the downtown scene where it is all hippie BS and nothing meaty about the music) is because speaking about such beautiful drumwork is absolutely redundant. Each solo is lovingly placed in context and emphasized in a way that illuminates the rhythm in the melody.

There is so much more to this album. 23 of my RYM friends rated it, but only 60 other people have rated it. I've always been under the impression that this is widely regarded as a perfect album. If you don't have this, get it now. This is probably the best album that will ever be posted on KiC.

PS. William Parker. That is all.