hout
[2005, robo records]

out on one of the multitude of tiny belgian labels at work paving-in the cracks and grey areas betwixt genres is this native belgian duo. for her part, venrooy's at home amongst the detritus of the belgian underground; maybe a shade more deliberate (conscious? cautious?) than antwerp's usual fare. her electronics subscribe to a clinical palette; borders on rodent-killing pitches at times, but mostly resides in traditional dsp work. croene on the other hand seems like the obvious odd one out. a quick run over the pianist's bio throws up names like bartok, sclesi and brahms, plus no references to any previous cross-genre efforts. it's easier to grasp though, after you read between the lines and assume he wants to be john tilbury. contemporary classical pianist seeks minimal electronic sound artist for duos (and possibly more). which is fair enough.

and sure, while the forays into extended minor key chords on piano are all there for the majority of the disc, venrooy's dsp work corrupts the piano and lends a feeling of decay rather than the delicate constructs of the tilbury/rowe marriage. the interplay between the two even seems easier to interpret as a subtle struggle than a collaborative effort in places. they serve up an array of different styles over the length (the opening track throws me back to a really nice tyondai braxton split), but digested as a whole it's hard to shake the feeling they've come up with (stumbled into?) a wintry improv analogue to the english nww crowd of the 80s. not really anal enough to sit aside amm, and not cultivating enough of an faux-occult vibe to fit with their other cousins. they'd probably be just as surprised as i am that that's where it's landed me, and yet here i am...
whatever you make of it, it's a considered shot in the arm re: the feral cult status belgium's been gathering recently, and one of the more interesting sleepers to be dredged up from last year.

Flix/Vellin

reviewed by blackandgold

ash and tabula; out trios vol. 3
[2005, atavistic]

nels cline is a los angeles based solo guitarist. his work is pretty well regarded amongst the experimental/avant-garde scene. he's collaborated with a whole slew of folks and currently keeps himself busy with his nels cline singers project, and sadly enough, since 2004 or 2005, he's been a member of indie media darlings wilco. maybe he can make them less boring. andrea parkins is out of new york, and she's a sound artist, composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist and all-around good person, one would assume anyway. amongst collaborating live with a bunch of people in nyc, she also performs in the andrea parkins and christian marclay duo. i wouldn't mind hearing a studio album from the two of them. make it happen, people. tom rainey is a drummer, also out of the new york area. i don't really know a whole lot about him, other than that he's also a fixture in the live music scene there and stylistically his drumming comes from a few different schools, on this album he shows off his jazz and rock chops.

ash and tabula is the third installment in this ongoing atavistic series (the fourth is slated to be released later this month) and nels cline actually hand-picked his collaborators. the previous two volumes brought together such artists as lee ranaldo, william hooker and roger miller (from mission of burma) on the first disc, and kevin drumm, jeff parker (tortoise and isotope 217) and michael zerang on number two.

while i had previously never heard of neither andrea (sadly, no relation to zeena parkins they are, in fact, cousins) nor tom rainey, nels knew what he was doing. with him taking care of the guitar duties, tom handling the drums, it's up to ms. parkins to do everything else. that's a pretty impressive feat considering that she's playing the accordian, keyboard, piano and a laptop. never a dull moment for her on this album. out of all of her contributions though, her keyboard and laptop ones are the most noteworthy, as she really lays down the ideal foundations for her fellow musicians to build off of. ash and tabula is at its best when the combination of music is atmospherics + guitar + drums, since what really stays with you is either nel's fantastic guitar playing or tom's head bobbing percussion. the more piano incorporating songs like lower story and alleys of north america, while certainly pleasant to listen to, have more of a jam vibe and don't play to their strengths. raptor and problem child, however, are prime examples of what this trio can do when everything comes together. the former track starts off with a staticy background, some light percussion, and affected guitar noise. as things move along tom's drumming breaks through as the focus, there's some left channel drone, and clean, memorable, guitar lines by nels cline. when the track nears its conclusion, the percussion's pace picks up and nels steps on the effects pedals bringing things to a nice, more chaotic end. problem child adheres to a similiar theme, but features more atmospherics by andrea parkins to keep the sound more dynamic and ever-evolving, it also features some great guitar playing, looping and manipulation. this album is indeed impressive and engaging, but what's most remarkable is that this was a spontaneous improvisation. this is really hard to fathom when you take into consideration how catchy it gets at times. i'd strongly recommend out trios vol. 3 to anyone who's into experimental instrumental music, especially since it's so enjoyable, not just interesting. unfortunately, i haven't listened to the other two volumes, but i have a hard time imagining that they could top this one.

Poem In An Ashtray Excerpt (from 9:02 to 12:29)

permanent drool / lucifer's twins
[2006, ladron tape]

let's see, i don't really know too much about warmer milks, other than the fact that they're from lexington, kentucky and that their current line-up is michael turner, travis shelton, greg backus and ben allen. trying to get a bit more background information from them off of google led me to a blastitude review of an older album and it said that they share members with hair police, but cross-referencing that info with the hair police bio on freedom from doesn't support that. maybe they used to have more members, i know their myspace page says "and shrinking more everyday" after listing off the line-up. shrug.

the first track, permanent drool, is definitely the more interesting one of the two. interesting in a furrowed brow kind of way. the press release from ladron tape says "Pick up game of sloth played in the basement. Everyone was told to go "one at a time" but things went really wrong..." actually...that's fairly accurate. listening to this without knowing any information in terms of how many members were in the band or anything of that nature, i would've sworn that there's atleast ten people making racket here. the whole twenty-six minutes has this anti-jam session aesthetic to it. while there's a great deal of different instruments and sounds being made, there's no obvious method to madness. you've got affected guitar noise, drums, vocal noise, junk metal, wooden blocks, bottles, possibly a violin, and maybe some brass instruments. all i know about that is that its sound ranges from that of a cow dying to a pack of yelping dogs in the distance. i dunno, a horn maybe? beats me. there's maybe one or two instances where a few key elements come together, but those moments are far between, and fleeting when they do happen. it's not bad at all, but definitely avant-garde.

the second and final track, lucifer's twins, in all of it's thirty-two minute glory, is the real moneymaker here. it utilizes the right and left stereo channels for two very contrasting tracks, that surprisingly enough, actually work well together. the left channel with its droney, reverbed, guitars takes on a sort of underwater quality, while the right channel's sound is crisper. the music being played in the right side is actually long samples of music that are slowed down and otherwise affected. soon the left channel's sound comes to resemble whale calls...recorded through a wall, as the guitars are processed even more, while the right continues to use different samples, most obviously of which is the music from the cartoon popeye. fantastic. the last third of the track brings both sides together a bit, with each one now centering around guitar based noise, or just plain guitar playing, and that's pretty much how the album ends.

ultimately, i really like what warmer milks have done here. while the first track wasn't my favorite, i enjoyed hearing the different aspects of the band, and look forward to hearing more from these guys.

Lucifer's Twins Excerpt (from 12:33 to 16:40)

rotating feedback & save the skulls
[2005, aa]

the skull defekts are a gothenburg (sweden) four-piece consisting of henrik rylander, joachim nordwall, eric olofsson and jean-louis huhta, though their line-up does tend to change a bit, on this album it's just joachim and henrik. while their members play more rock-based instruments like the drums and guitar (in addition to synth, turntable and laptop), their music is more rooted in experimental electronic. some members of skull defekts used to be in rock and electronic outfits kid commando, dead letters spell out dead words and union carbide.

actually, i think that the more appropriate title for this album should be rotating skull & save the feedback since the latter is most notably absent. while a thirty-eight minute feedback fest along the lines of black dice's birthstone would be pretty great (or not) what we get instead is a pretty low-key electronic affair. i've heard some other albums from these guys and sometimes they do incorporate drums and guitar into their music, but this one is solely electronic and was made using mixing desks and a contact microphone. like i previously touched on, this is one long track with a length long enough to keep most people away. that's a shame too, because they'd be missing out on a pretty nice album.

the combination of their name and the fact that they recently released a split with wolf eyes may conjur up images of more abrasive musical leanings, but rs&stf is a creeper of an album. it opens up with some faint rumbling noise in the background and pulsing tones, but those soon fall out of the picture as the main focal point of the track is a hum that's pretty reminiscent of an idling motor. throughout the album all kinds of different sounds come and go, but when they come, they do so in waves. waves of repetitious sound that occur, usually, in five second or so intervals. while as a whole the album is fairly minimal, it does have its peaks when these different elements come together to create a nice harmony. make that harmony in the feng-shui sense, not a melodious one. i just wished that these moments lasted longer than the one or two minutes that they usually stick around for.



if it weren't for wolf eyes, i'm willing to bet that most people outside of sweden that have heard of the skull defekts probably wouldn't have otherwise. i'd listened to dead letters and kid commando a few years back, but never really cared enough about them to follow the path of either band's members, but, for this album anyway, i'm glad to be reacquainted with some of them.

Rotating Feedback & Save The Skulls Excerpt (from 11:08 to 15:23)