Turntable History: Spin Ensemble
Arnold Dreyblatt's Turntable History: Spin Ensemble was recorded March 12, 2011 by Ernst Karel at Boston's Goethe Institut. This performance version of the original piece (released on CD as IMPREC323) provides a different perspective on the original composition. From the original studio version of the piece: Arnold Dreyblatt (b.1953) is an American composer who has studied with La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier. He is a member of the German Academy Of Art. He has released wo…
Ancestral star
Returning with a brand new album of arid, dustbowl blues and slow-motion desert-scapes, Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras resume duties as Barn Owl for a third album. Previously this band has tended to court associations with the sound developed by Earth for their Hex album; the overall effect is resolutely bleak and doom-laden, yet not entirely without some grounding in the language of grassroots Americana. Ancestral Star takes the Barn Owl sound to a new level of refinement, spending much…
Unboxed
Unboxed, a collection of dissected from the Lowest Form of Life 10CD box set (on RRR) (including tracks not available in the box set) is a splash introduction to a newcomer of the L.A.F.M.S. The Lowest Form of Music is an utterly devastating set of the works of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. This tremendously obscure collective -- a loose assemblage of artists and with shared subversive musical interests (John Cage, The Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, The Residents, Derek B…
Live in Buffalo
Aka: the shape of (free) jazz to come. Bill Nace on electric guitar and Steve Baczowski on bass saxophone bless us with two sides of furious, raw improvised music. Their motto is easy to recognize from the beginning: total freedom, with instruments on fire moving along as if in the middle of a power electronics assault. Just a few seconds of silence, and then a small, delicate whistle starts, soon accompanied by a sinister percussive sound that introduces a sax / guitar dialogue which is …
Ante-Mortem
Astonishing new record: Ante-Mortem" is one of Ghédalia Tazartès’ major works of the last 20 years. Although simply named 1 to 23, the CD bears a collection of very diverse tracks, a couple of them connected in a thematical frame, others simply standing for themselves. What holds them all together is first and all Tazartès’ archetypical voice. One could say that "Ante-Mortem" contains some of his harshest ever tracks as well as a couple of his most humorous ones."The album’s musical palette is a…
The World's Longest Melody
The World’s Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky’s musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the enthusiasm for his work by the musicians of the Belgian electric guitar quartet ZWERM.
The acoustic and electric guitar are featured both solo and in small and large combinations; a few pieces not originally conceived for the instrument are also pre…
Gone
Columbus, OH two-piece horror sound unit, Sword Heaven clock in with a sweaty water boarded masterpiece of claustrophobic proportions. Fun house mirrors and stretched out faces yell from behind flaming curtains while a Neanderthal cave bat clubs your dome over and over and over. These are the sounds - the kids are not all right and that is all right. With just drums and looped vocals and samples, the train slowly leaves the station. The filthy sounds produced are both a joyous middle finge…
Entrance
To these ears, Sword Heaven’s recorded output has always strived to match the power and intensity of the band’s live performances. Due to low fidelity and the ineffability of putting live energy to tape, the ardent Sword Heaven fan is left with vivid memories of intense performances, and a smattering of tapes, CD-Rs, and vinyl that are a fuzzy, diluted representation of what they saw and heard. It can be argued that any/all recordings will suffer the same fate when compared to a live show…
Sun Circle
The most recent release on the lichen label; all releases are hand-assembled by zach wallace in his native ann arbor environs and offer of a lovely wave of art-sound, field recordings, improvisation with natural non-instruments, and, in the case of this particular title, a pair of pieces by greg davis and zach himself on farfisa, distorted vocals, and bells. the first appears to be a zonked “cover” of lamonte young’s “31 vii 69 10:26 - 10:49 pm munich from map of 49's dream the two systems of el…
Mirage
With Mirage on Important Records, Smegma again does the impossible. 38 years after reinventing the musical wheel, they have recorded a stunning masterpiece. With four of the original members working together again for the first time in many years, together with many new collaborators , they have kept alive their unique brand of old school primitive, Avant/Garage music. Running the gamut from the Musique Concrete inspired subtilely bombastic mood of the Title track to World of my Own's frenzied n…
Heavy Deeds
Sun Araw - and the Not Not Fun label in general for that matter - are becoming ever more essential with each release. Heavy Deeds is the latest dubbed-out, tropical psych missive from this far-out collective, featuring an increasingly mature approach to experimental queasiness, which on this occasion is reminiscent of fellow solar travellers Sunburned Hand Of The Man knocking heads together with Sun Ra. There's some incredible wah-wah funk to be found here, jostling amongst a barrage of synapse-…
World of Echo
At first listen, World of Echo sounds like meaningless dreck that barely wakes up to complete a melody or enunciate a single verse of poetry. And Arthur Russell's legacy has never been richer for it. This year's mass rediscovery and mythologization of the late Russell-- an Iowan who seemed to be swinging on a tire over the Mississippi, even when in downtown Manhattan-- was remarkable. Russell's various projects-- including Dinosaur L, Indian Ocean, and Loose Joints-- got fete…
First Thought Best
Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur Russell wanted to be a composer. His journey began in 1972, leaving Iowa to study Indian classical composition with Ali Akbar Khan in Northern California and ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music. In that brief period Arthur met and worked with several musicians and poets that would guide his work throughout the remainder of the decade: Allen Ginsburg, Christian Wolff, Jackson MacLow, Rhys Chatham, Ph…
Calling Out Of Context
Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day, those comfortable with his modern classical accomplishments were baffled by his acetates of loopy leftfield disco. Likewise, lovers of these dance tracks were confounded by their beatless, beatific recasting on World of Echo. And then there were listeners astounded by the intimacy of his voice and cello work, stymied by both the pop songs and the classical works, all spinnin…
Pacific Drift
Way too much is made these days of looking back, memory, social network fantasias. What a bummer, cause reality s a bad experience and 2012 is on deck; we deserve whatever we get. Evolve or erode, dudes. LA visigoths Robedoor slip into another sinkhole of voidist shadow-rock with Pacific Drift, three new tracks recorded across the last greylight winter. The A side stirs into a jazzy apocalypto depression with flute-keys and an overdriven OM groove that spirals in a web of distortion before drift…
Raymilland
Raymilland formed in the summer of 1978 in St. Louis and lasted until the fall of 1981. Although starting out playing standard punk covers by the Buzzcocks, Damned, and Ultravox, their original influences and ideas about music leaned more toward the no-wave bands of NY and the more experimental bands from the UK. Raymilland played live eight times; four in St. Louis and four in Chicago. A fifth Chicago date slotted to open for Joy Division never happened when the US tour was canceled due to the …
Public Service
“Almost Washed My Hair” erupts from the stereo like some bastard child from a universe where Iggy Pop fronted The Velvet Underground and the only song in their repertoire was “Sister Ray” but they could never remember how to play it. This ear-splitting and cacophonous rock sounds as raw and powerful as anything else in my record collection. The deafening guitars dominate everything; only ghosts of vocals and a hammering beat are perceptible under the overloaded amplifiers. However…
Lasted
Lasted is the third album by Thomas Meluch under the alias Benoit Pioulard. Thomas has toured throughout North America and Europe since his last record, the process of which has had a marked impact on the development of these songs as lyrics and structures have been scrapped, tweaked and reworked in the live setting. As with previous albums it was recorded and mixed in domestic isolation, this time throughout the rainy season in his current home of Portland, Oregon. While the extent of the…
Phantom Payn Daze
While in the widely neglected 39 Clocks, he made records that never sold and played gigs that few ever saw, Juergen Gleue has arguably been the most important exponent of electrified German sound since the late 1970s. Phantom Payn Daze was made in the mid to late 90s and has never been released. It's his final LP and is overflowing with all the elements that romanticized, loner / stoner music claims, an encoded expression of highly private feelings, an ambiguous, emotional quotient, and a dark…
Music From Italian TV
New LP - The Phantom Family Halo - Music From Italian TV - The label behind this release is using a very cryptic description for this record. One that, unfortunately, won't help sell many copies of a very enjoyable record. We won't be reprinting said description here, but what we will tell you what we know. Phantom Family Halo Band is from Louisville, Kentucky. At least one member of the band Sapat (remember their great LP on Siltbreeze from a couple years back?) is involved, but thi…