luovaja's reading sounds
[2007, luovaja]

prior to mikael sending this disc to me, i hadn't heard of his finland-based label. his mentioning of a compilation of sounds that were based off of classic literature, piqued my interest. granted, not not fun beat them to the punch with their extravagant tapeworms eat bookworms a few years back, but the literary theme, outside of the packaging for it, was pretty hard to pick up in the music. could this one be any different? how the hell would i know? i take a real hands-off approach towards books, and as a result haven't read or even heard of most of the ten books which provided inspiration. those literary works, in order, being: valis, ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus, yukiguni, les chants de maldoror, une saison en enfer, mary poppins (saw the movie!), mirdja, walden, the bible (okay, i have managed to hear about this one before) and virtahepo olohuoneessa.

one of the best and worst things about books is how they're open to interpretation. that's one of the real reasons that i'm not too into reading. i always fail to grasp the 'greater meaning' and then someone tells you, no, that wasn't about a poor family living in the midwest, it was a dichotomy between blah and blah. then i just get pissed. with that in mind, one of the things that i like the most about this cd is how you have different artists, from different locations, with different books creating music that blends well together, for the most part. maybe all of the books that they read were really just metaphors for pleasant folk-based music?reading sounds wisely starts off with brent mini & eric lampton's piece. synchronocity music most projects the feel of the book, which is science-fiction. not only that, but the artists' names are actually taken from the book, and the end of the track features a computerized voice reading an excerpt from valis. their track has a spacey minimal feel to it, and i think that it does a good job establishing theme and mood, yet it's one of the cd's weaker tracks.

from there we'll go to one of the best pieces of music by iamheard. the novel it's based off of is titled the loveliness and wretchedness of human life, and judging purely by the name, i think that they do a great job of conveying that imagery. hongistola's a moody number that centers around a sample of a thunderstorm and pairs that with delicate and somber piano playing.

santtu hirvikorpi's komako was inspired by a late 1940s japanese novel. graciously, santtu will employ some sounds and instrumentation that are recognizable as being traditionally asian, while also bringing in a western folk element.

after that prettier offering we're greeted (annoyed by?) a kitschy old school drum machine loop (mogwai's superheroes of bmx, anyone?). palvelu will also use some minimal piano playing and the way that his vocals are recorded, actually makes me kind of like this song. the biggest issue that i have with this is that its inspiration was supposed to come from a book of prose from 1869. the drum machine just seems like a really odd choice to me.

the droning layers of haute cuisine's une saison en enfer seems to do justice to rimbaud's hallucinatory inclinations. the song is nothing remarkable, but it's short and sweet.

ah, hell yeah, robert horton, one of the two artists i recognize on here. robert doesn't disappoint either with his lush "i am not a centipede", said mary poppins. the first half of the track involves a simplistic layer of repetitious drones in the background and what i'm guessing is a xylophone. the xylo taps are spaced out so that each one is giving the room that it needs to vibrate, echo and eventually drone away, building up the atmosphere. the latter half will add some acoustic guitar plucks to the mix. heavenly.

mirdja, by vellamo, is a lovely bit of minimal acoustic folk. i'm a firm believer that you can't have too many folky finnish ladies with nice voices. it's a very wonderful language that's mind boggling to have to enunciate, but it sounds so beautiful sung. i especially like the second half of mirdja with the multi-tracked and panned spoken word vocals seemingly coming at you from everywhere.

alligator crystal moth, i've heard of you, too. while i'm not very sure how their blend of traditional folk and psych-rock impulses convey henry david thoreau's "social critique of (the) contemporary western world and the study of simple life", it sure sounds great! the affected guitar noise and feedback which closes out white lilies was a real punch in the arm.

another nice job with the arrangement comes by way of placing the two worst songs in the last positions. hydor kephale's gothic knife rule is far too long at ten minutes and the music itself is minimal electronic, in a not too dissimilar vein to the valis track, which is alright (but not at that length) and then added to that are affected, multi-tracked vocals, giving it a dark vibe. i'm pretty sure that the lyrics are taken from the gospel of luke 2:1-20, and are delivered in a talking manner. one layer's slowed down for maximum effect. i couldn't make it past six minutes before i skipped ahead.

... which prematurely brought me to marko marin's virtahevon kuolema. comparatively, i'd probably rather listen to gothic knife rule. it's summed up best as new age. awful. there's a bit of percussion that's not so bad, but the synth screams enya! shit, i'd rather listen to enya's sail away than this. bummer.

listening to this disc in its entirety might leave you feeling kind of salty, but knowing that you can hit stop after that great eighth track and not miss out on anything is nice. as with nearly every good compilation, you're going to get some bad songs, some really good ones, and a handful of alright ones. in that tradition, reading sounds was a success. seeing as how the best artists on this disc don't have releases on the label (yet, marko marin does), it doesn't give me a very clear idea as to the direction of luovaja. then again, it wasn't meant to serve as a sampler.

Vellamo - Mirdja
Alligator Crystal Moth - White Lilies

i'd been wanting to add a podcast feature to the blog for sometime now, but feared that it was just way too much of a fucking hassle. turns out, it is! well, eh, it's
not that bad. anyway, i went out and bought a mic yesterday, screwed around a bit and made something that i'm mildly proud of. the music's great, but i hate talking into microphones. i'm really envious of trash stratum's undergrowth podcast, the way he uses the computer voice to do all of the recaps, clever clever! i may just resort to getting girls with sweet voices to do this shit for me...

one big thing of note with this show, it's not going to adhere to any distinct musical theme. i think sixty minutes of noise or minimalism is bad news. what i'm aiming for is to be pretty diverse so that i can hopefully attract people to new music that they've never heard before by surrounding it with things that they might already like. don't worry, i'm not going to be half-assed about it, i'll find a way to work a bunch of different shit in while not having it sound like you just have your winamp set to random.

since this is my first go with this, comments would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

essay #1 (it's a play on words, or rather, letters)




guilty connector - beats, noise & life
the gories - six cold feet
the gun club - promise me
the digitariat - shouting at passing cars
toshimaru nakamura - nimb 32
gerritt - the random ones
jason kahn - bass drum + snare drum + floor tom + bells
kaffe matthews - this many planes 7" (side a)
pain jerk - tick tack tumor
kites - tears of the youth
death chants - passing by
wooden wand & the vanishing voice - party with me pinko
ashtray navigations - diamond fin shark, his home is the ocean
akitsa - sang nordique
knit witch - bell, book and candle
pissed jeans - people person

i was a bit preoccupied working on something else, so i figured that this would be the perfect time for the second review that har har sent me. dude has a way with adjectives, as you'll see, ha. fantastic.

les tricoteuses
[2007, savage land]

august 14th, 1995. dared by the head of the now-defunct audible hiss label, ned hayden, to deliver an entire album in a single day, to live and shave in l.a. hurriedly gave birth to an interview with the mitchell brothers: a raw, scathing obscurity which (perhaps prematurely) boasted "genre obsolete and noise passé". despite its 'best intentions', mitchell brothers was "a little rushed," and the originally recorded material would have to wait for more than a decade to pass before receiving the proper post-production treatment it deserved . that said, as a part of tlasila's canon, with its emphasis placed on a hellish, hyper-sexualized meta narrative, and tlasila's signature convention-snuffing sonics, an interview with the mitchell brothers began to weave the creative framework which would become fully realized in the pre-reformation swan-song epic, 2002's the wigmaker in eighteenth-century williamsburg. tom smith, however, unsatisfied with the unpolished and rough effort, quickly began work on les tricoteuses, an album that would reconstruct, remix, and recontextualize mitchell brothers into a time-warped, nightmare-dub narrative; shifting the setting from california in the 1970's to the guillotines and gates of the bastille in 1790's france.
a stunning, semen-soaked example of to live and shave in l.a.'s post-reformation aesthetic, delicately regurgitated upon their more youthful, pre-wigmaker antics, and featuring the classic core lineup of tom smith, rat bastard, and ben wolcott (with additional aid provided by billy taylor), les tricoteuses' refined dub-noise deconstruction of mitchell brothers is not only a dramatic reconciliation between albums, but past incarnations of the group itself. crafted and skin-grafted from the brothers' gutted carcass, les tricoteuses presents a series of ten selections that seem as at home with noon and eternity's ambient, musique concrète passages as they are with wigmaker's inferno of cosmic anguish and sexual violence. here, an interview with the mitchell brothers' narrative and accompanying score are finally given the breadth and space they deserve, as they shock and salaciously oscillate with renewed fervor and rabid foaming mouths. it is impossible to underestimate just how much his work with ohne has influenced tom smith's present post-production efforts, and nowhere is this more evident than in tracks like dry hustle and latter half of bursts sedate, which find tom's voice expanding and contracting, filling up gasping and gaping voids across space and time. the performances from smith's associates are greatly enhanced as well, as rat bastard's bass guitar is cut-up and condensed into concentrated bursts of gut-churning riffage, while ben wolcott's oscillators shriek and drone appropriately amidst the verbose scenes of heavily amputated narrative and swirling cesspools of fractal electronics looking for love in all the wrong places.

without spoiling the ending, i'll just say that the plot had me in rapt attention throughout. les tricoteuses is the latest chapter in to live and shave in l.a.'s ever-expanding canon, and the first of three scheduled releases for the savage land label, out of france. featuring design and cover art by the deliciously infamous gregory jacobsen, les tricoteuses is more than a casual release of a long-languishing remix project, it's a must-have for longtime to live and shave in l.a. fans and late-bloomers alike.

Gash of the Nomenclature

reviewed by har har

the rest of the hymns package comes by way of two ironing cd-rs. it should be noted that all of the specific references that i'll be making in regards to sound samples used will come from andrew chadwick's thorough and greatly appreciated cd liner notes. those are also viewable online here (for pocket almanac) and here (a day at the beach).

pocket almanac
[2007, hymns]

post-gaybomb/ironing split 12", andrew let me know that if i wasn't digging his latest discs (because they center less around noise) that i didn't have to review 'em. o ye of little faith! to his credit, i am only on disc one of two, ha.

pocket almanac (so named because it was recorded from a performance at tallahassee's pocket sandwich, where ironing opened for nautical almanac) is an amazing disc of sound art, audio collaging, experimentation and a touch of plunderphonics. koji marutani, however; this is not. whereas artists like koji and john oswald can craft entire pieces of music out of other people's pieces of music, ironing uses significantly less samples, and will, instead, manipulate and layer them to achieve a unique effect.

sorry, wrong number will start off the eight song, thirty minute set (the disc flows together seamlessly). it combines ambientish (and kind of eerie) background noise with excerpts from an old radio broadcast, on vinyl, which he'll manipulate a bit. that background noise is actually a recording from a performance of new yorker nirav soni, and will be used in a few other areas during the disc. a little bit of an aside real quick, soni might be familiar to some for his journalistic works including contributions to bagatellen, stylus, erstwhile and ink. i haven't been able to find out too much anything about his music, but i'm liking what ironing uses of his.
wrong number will flow into pocket bumper, which starts off with an excerpt of a patra record (dude loves his dancehall reggae, apparently. i briefly went to college with a bunch of jamaicans, so i know more about the stuff than i probably should) and will incorporate various other vocal samples into the equation as patra's beats fade in and out of the mix. what i really like about this one comes more in the latter half via chadwick's use of a skipping cd-r. when a cd skips that you want to listen to, that shit is aggravating, when it's being used as music, it's actually pretty good, even more so when it's meshing with the spatial background ambiance. another nice touch to bumper comes by way of a radio host's voice, there's this bass-like quality to it, which then segues brilliantly into the beats when they make their final reentry.

microscrewed, microchopped (a brilliant homage to dj screw) is one of my favorite works on a disc that isn't short on them. it's also the only one not to feature musical excerpts, save for soni's original sound source. the rest of it sounds like affected turntable manipulations and towards the end, the skipping cd comes back into play. this is definitely the noisiest that ironing will get on this particular outing.

oster drop will carry on with a similar sound but will feature pre-recorded keyboard playing by jenn oster (you need to pay a bit of attention to really pick up on it, at least i needed to), but when ironing gets to the real thick pulses of bass towards the end, that's when i'm won over. i'm enjoying whatever record he's using that has those female vocals near the 3:34 mark. it's very haunting in conjunction with the bass-heaviness of the track. loads of well used samples (and layering) here.

the disc will close with my dearest dear, and i'm absolutely in love with this piece of music. the foundation for it is an english folksong (of the same name) sung by a couple of southern belles, elizabeth and sandy laprelle, and it was taken from a radio show back in 2005. i'm a huge fan of traditional sounding country & western, bluegrass and old folk music, so right from the start i'm digging it, but andrew's manipulations (delays) and scratching provide for four and a half minutes of serene beauty. i'm real impressed.

for the one or none of you who might actually like appalachian folk music, elizabeth laprelle has a myspace with a few a capella songs on it.

Won't You?

a day at the beach
[2007, hymns]

in comparison to the other albums that i've heard from ironing, this one is on a whole other level. you won't find any normal music samples, nor any of his turntable manipulations. a day at the beach isn't about manipulating mediums of sound, but of manipulating sound itself. this is more along the lines of musique concrète than anything i'd heard previously.

the disc will begin with a three minute field recording taken from a beach in miami. it sounds like you'd expect a day on a popular beach to sound. the main thing is that this recording will serve as the sound source for the two tracks that are to follow.the first of those was from a parking lot performance in which andrew, using ten separate cassette players, played ten different tape loops all procured from the miami beach recording. using a mic that was ran through the pa system, he'd go around to the different tape players to give the piece an ever evolving perspective. that covers the technical aspects, now let's get to the sound. as i'm sure you could gather, there are a lot of layers to this. i'd have to suspect that he manipulated some of the loops beforehand, since i can't really place a lot of the samples. it equates to a whole lot differing layers of drone. i can pick up on the wind-created distortion and the seagulls, but that's all that will remind me of the original field recording. i love the slight feedback produced by putting a mic in front of the different speakers as well, it provides the ideal companion to the panning drones.

the final track is actually two pieces of music in one. it utilizes the same cassette loops, but in two completely different environments, with the results of both being quite a bit different, not just from themselves, but the previous track as well. in the left stereo channel, andrew recorded his tape loops spread throughout a friend's kitchen and dining room. in the right, andrew used a more sterile setting; a recording studio. this time around it seems like i can pick up on a few more aspects from the original recording. with regards to the sound in each, the studio sourced one, obviously, has a cleaner sound to it, more of a droning ambiance. the left channel is a little bit noisier due to recorder distortion. it's really interesting to hear these two tracks, synced up, but yielding different results. again, for me, those flourishes of feedback are killer. especially when you'll first hear it in the left channel, and then have the same sounds replicated a few seconds later in the other speaker. brilliant work. headphones are highly recommended.

A Day at the Beach 2 (be aware that this track is twenty-one minutes in length)

next on the agenda are some newish (they were probably new when i originally received them) discs from andrew chadwick's hymns label.

777 3" cd-r
[2007, hymns]

hymns will keep the love in gainesville for the jijimuge disc. info about these guys is pretty scarce, but i think it's a duo of jonathon simonelle and bobby moseley.

i always get a slight kick when i rip a cd and notice that it's tagged as something rather inappropriate. 777 was labeled as danielle steel's irresistable (sic); chapters 42-44. i'm stoked that this disc is full of glorious drone instead of something where i might hear the word throbbing without being immediately followed by bassline or gristle.

the best way that i could quickly encapsulate my thoughts on this three inch would be with the words truly pleasant. whenever someone can flip drone and make it a) dark and sinister, b) icy and desolate, or c) warm and ethereal, well, chances are i'll be a fan. of course, the more artists that you have working within these templates, the harder it's going to be for one to make their impression felt, but jijimuge have made a real strong case for their existence with 777.

things will begin rather calmly for disc opener, 7. slowly, but slowly, a triplet of droning layers will be featured. during the midsection, as 7's structure will begin to make itself known, two of those layers will alternate back and forth to create a lovely and slightly understated melody. it's a real subtle piece of music. 77 takes a lot less time than its predecessor in establishing its sound. i couldn't really pick up on any of the more musical nuances, but the panning, which they won't weigh too heavily upon, is done to absolute perfection. the album will sign off with the track 777. i'm not one hundred percent on this, but it might be my favorite. over warm layers over drone, there's this noisier little addition that sounds like someone put a ball bearing in a metal mixing bowl, and just swished it around over and over. actually, that sound might be noisy if it weren't mixed so far down, which really works to its benefit. the way that it'll slowly migrate all over the stereo channels was fantastic, too. when you add to that the way the drones will start to recede, giving the illusion that the music's fading out, only to kick back up again is yet another simple, but great, touch.

777

jijimuge at the 2nd street bakery (gainesville, fla)

oops. credit an unexpected social gathering after work and the subsequent hangover monday afternoon for not getting this done on time.

glass v grass ep
[2007, self-released]

missoula, montana's jasmine dreame wagner (and co.'s) latest offering is just two tracks, weighing in at a shade under nineteen minutes. at first i wondered, why not just release these as 3" cd-rs? well, those are more expensive than your plain blank versions and jasmine likes to sell her albums for pretty cheap, so it makes sense. it also works in the scheme of her packaging with a regular sized cd booklet of nice illustrations.

whether it's due to a rotating group of musicians or just musical growth, each of the three albums that i've heard from conc has had a different sound. granted, the differences were more hop-like as opposed to leaps and bounds, but it's been noticeable. the older black wolf dancers play galaxy of no stars took on a weirder folk vibe. occasionally reminding me of spires that in the sunset rise. last year's excellent vineland presented us with a seemingly more focused version of the band with an emphasis on composition and song structure. glass vs grass will take a bit of a step back from that.

the album starts off with glass vs and it's the track that stands out the most as being a departure. it doesn't begin with anything too out of the ordinary, with its wind chimes, then next come the drums, until finally jdw's multi-tracked spoken word vocals. alright, still nothing out of the ordinary, but as glass vs builds, it mutates into something more along the lines of post-rock. while my initial response was hmmm, this is different, i really like it. the second half is instrumental with the focus being primarily on drumming. i'm not sure who's doing it, but they're doing it well. the background features swirling drones and guitar noise. as it winds down it will end beautifully with music box chimes.the grass will tread familiar ground, back to singer / songwriter mode. there's summery field recordings to provide warm ambiance for jasmine's soft, multi-tracked, singing and acoustic strums. the melancholy feel of the music, as well as the lyrics, create an interesting, if not contradictory range of sounds. the grass came across to me as a stripped-down sibling to vineland's title track.

Glass VS

due to a long night yesterday (and into today), i'll let our newest contributor (from the excellent heavy vibes blog) handle the review today. tomorrow i'll get to (what i think is) the latest release from cabinet of natural curiosities. i might also use less parentheses tomorrow. doubtful.

luteus
[2007, resipiscent]

instrument builder peter blasser is a living legend in the homemade electronics and circuit-bending circles, and with good reason! his design schematics (which he'll apparently trade for floral specimens) are as innovative as the sounds his instruments produce are unpredictable. according to resipiscent's press release, his "din datin dudero, tranoe, ambrazier, and rollable synth behave differently depending on who plays them." did you catch that?! peter b's instruments don't play differently, they behave differently. now, i don't mean to imply that any of his hand-crafted gadgets possess some sort of sentience, as fun as that might seem to an active imagination (namely, my own), but the point i mean to make is that these circuits slurp, gobble, chew up and spontaneously spit out some crazy curious soundforms. the result of peter b going tête-à-tête with his cocolases, sidrassi organs, shinths ("the first synthesizer designed to be broken!") and who knows what else, is at once willfully self-indulgent, and undeniably whimsical. there is a strong sense of play at work on luteus, and it's really refreshing to hear something this self-consciously sloppy sound as good as it does, as opposed to the leagues of lazy goons who erroneously assume that it's enough to make a noise without caring how it sounds as it strikes the eardrums.

luteus features thirteen tracks, three of which were taken from a live set in 2004. each of these tracks stand out individually due to the album's expressive, high-quality production values, one notable feature of which includes peter b's great use of space in the recording. often, peter b's child-like babbling and lute strumming erupts into all manners of squiggly, blurting tones and sharp squelches and squeals, but the amount of space he gives each unpredictable sound to move within often causes his expanding and contracting oscillations to come across as almost organic. even more impressive, is that while peter b's homemade instruments can make a manic, nautical almanac-like racket, they can also be put to more traditional use.
there are several lighter moments on luteus where peter b shows off his latent indie-pop sensibility, performing actual songs. many of these sing-songs are short, silly, and pleasant, and within this context, share an interesting dynamic when paired with the carefree dadaist electronics on display throughout luteus's thirteen tracks. in fact, some of luteus' more song-like moments are among the album's highlights, my favorite being the minimalist vocal call-and-response of i'm your owl, what is your mystery?, which is based solely upon minimalist vocal call-and-response. that being said, personally i feel that peter b is at his best when less focused on simplistic songcraft, and totally absorbed in provoking absurd reactions from his diy contraptions.

balancing its erratic circuit-bent noise bits with a positive and playful execution, peter b's luteus is an album that defies easy categorization due to its carefree mixture of pleasant sing-songs, occasional shards of high-frequency noise, senseless babbling, "crazy ass delusions", and queasy pulsating drones. luteus comes packaged in a standard jewel-case, with an absolutely essential full-colour booklet that includes several portraits of peter b's eclectic electro-acoustic instruments. the always reliable resipiscent has scored once again with luteus, a cd which freely experiments with form and flavor almost as much as the label that sought fit to release it.

luteus can be purchased at the resipiscent records website. peter b also performs in the trio sejayno, whose vinyl release sedaity is available from shinkoyo, heresee, skulls of heaven, boc, and ignivomous.

(you can stream tracks from this album at resipiscent's website. their link is in the left-hand column.)

reviewed by har har