barcelona
[audiobot, 2006]

not one of those godawful improvised sound/cinema pairings (see: scanner's mindless noodling over alphaville), the cremaster in question is the iberian duo of ferran fages (pictured bottom right) & alfredo costa monteiro (pictured right top), true superstars of eai, with literally dozens of fans EACH. though they usually indulge in traditional instrumentation (yet still managing to alienate the casual listener), in cremaster form they're operating in noise country; mixing board & guitar/pickups. i've seen other cremaster releases referred to as harsh or painful, but the only one i've heard personally (infra on antifrost) seems to suggest links more to crystalline japanese eai.

meanwhile, cremaster's holiday in raw eai takes place in mattin's (pictured left) home territory; his outdated laptop (which seems to be a point of pride) feeds back through the internal microphone, which he then fucks about with in typically obscure fashion; lo and hi-tech wrangling. on top of that his constant confrontational politicking (think a drunk, surly cardew) helps set him down awkwardly between austerity and brutality.

typically enough, the trio kick off proceedings with a screaming noise vignette which then develops into.... near-silence. the drop-off is dramatic enough to spark an obligatory headphone-check, yet the attack doesn't lose intensity. it's still raging quietly, till, to fuck with you further, it starts throwing up waves of volume over the speakers which dissipate as quickly as they come. flowerbursts of static on a sinewave stem start popping up soon after; hopes are high. while momentum tapers off a little, and it settles down into more extended slices of icy tones and/or blanketing noise, what follows is still enough for some premature year-end list jockeying on my part. the impressive restraint and inventiveness probably makes this the years top contender for gateway noise album. novices need definitely apply. even at cracking volume, as a whole it's still strangely inviting.

one thing a little unusual is the packaging, which looks very diy this time round for audiobot. the cover has a retarded collage thing going on; some kind of witty satire which years of apathy and disinterest in the political arena have helped me to shrug off immediately. in any case, i guess they had to admit their ridiculously elaborate packaging wasn't realistic if you're issuing 3 new albums a month. and liking the album without even the promise of a free matching t-shirt makes me feel like slightly less of a whore for the impulse-buys.

Barcelona, part 2

pot baby
[2006, volcanic tongue]

lately it's seemed that if you liked anything in the psych-folk genre, someone from the charalambides was probably involved in it.

originally from texas, heather leigh murray, oh wait, she's dropped the murray now, heather leigh, has been doing her folky thing since the mid-90s, working with shawn david mcmillen as parachutes, who would later go on to become ash castles on the ghost coast. hell of a name change eh? after acotgc, she would join the charalambides in 2000. not content with just being in one psych-folk band, she also has her hands (and voice) in scorces, with christina carter, and, taurpis tula with david keenan, who you may know from the telstar ponies. tracing the lineage of charlambides band members is exhausting. oh, yeah, and along the way she managed to put out a few solo records, cuatro vocal cd-r, give the ashes to the indians and this one right here.

pot baby is two tracks, nearly 52 minutes long, and if you're familiar with hlm's solo output, you might've been a bit taken back with this release. it opens up with a grinding drone, and you can say that it is a little different for her. ms. leigh's prior albums stayed truer to her roots. those roots being folky and minimal, like christina carter, or something more psych-folk and pretty, like her work in taurpis tula and scorces. here, we have her trademark vocal cooing or whatever the hell you want to call it, buried under a seriously noisy (for her, atleast) backdrop. the noise subsides for a little harmonica playing, then the track shifts into a darker electronic sound that i don't think anyone could confuse with psych-folk. the second track starts off in more familiar territory. siren-like singing, joined with prettier musical accompaniment, but that's soon slowed down and chopped up as the singing becomes less pretty and more banshee-like, and there's a layer of noise thrown in for good measure.

if you're a fan of heather leigh and would like to hear something out of the ordinary from her, this is your chance. other people might recoil at the fact that she's moved away from her signature sound and is trying her hand at "noise". get over it. i think this is a fine album. i've enjoyed everything she's done, excluding the charalambides, whom i've pretty much stopped paying attention to, and this album won't make me stop liking her. one thing though, how about making some more taurpis tula albums, please? taurpistula.com not working is definitely a bad sign...

Untitled Track One Excerpt (from 17:07 to 22:27)

organ cuts ii
[2006, resipiscent]

sixes is one man, ryan jencks, hailing from the 90s indie/punk/hardcore music hotbed, san diego. speaking of which, ryan was previously involved in the experimental rock collective, physics, with rob crow, yes that rob crow, along with many, many, other people during that group's various incarnations. additionally, ryan was in crash worship, which i've never heard before. supposedly, it's psychedelic/tribalesque/noisy..it does feature three drummers, if that tells you anything. given all this backstory, you might be tempted to let his previous rock experience deceive you, especially his associations with rob crow, please don't. sixes is noise. pure as the driven snow noise. besides, rob crow was down with drive like jehu, so we can forgive him for a few of his missteps..and maybe i do like pinback...maybe i do...

i bought the first edition of organ cuts earlier this year from hanson and loved it. it was harsh, but at the same time it had different things going on. when i got this one a few weeks back from ryan at his show in sacramento with hive mind and charlie draheim, he told me that it was less harsh than his other stuff and described it as 'stoney' (for obvious reasons). rather than leave you contemplating what stoner noise might sound like, i'll tell you: the majority of this album, especially the middle two tracks, do indeed have a space-like vibe to them. the sound is stripped down, leaving drones and a minimalist industrial quality, with beeps and various sounds adding to that effect.

the album starts off with a thick layer of a fuzzy, crackling, static, then about six and a half minutes in, the static drops out, giving way to a slew of synthesized noise before coming back. the mid-section of the cd pretty much removes the noisier aspects of track one and favors a more minimal dark droning sound. if i were to pick a favorite, it might be the fourth, and last, track. it contains some similiar aspects that the opener had, but it's repetitious nature makes it stand out a bit more than the others.

organ cuts ii achieves a rare feat for me, and that's that it's a noise album that i would actually want to go back and listen to again. there's a ton of noise that's interchangeable, hey if i can't listen to x i'll just listen to y instead, but this is more distinguished for me. that's not to say that it's wholly original, i can draw a few parallels between this and luasa raelon's storms of neptune, but they both have this going for them, they're great albums.

organ cuts i was a bootleg cd-r put out on stomach ache, but supposedly there's plans for its reissue by resipiscent...sometime.

Untitled Track 2